A 69-year-old man who has spent 44 years behind bars for a murder in Fullerton will be soon freed after an Orange County Superior Court judge reduced his conviction to manslaughter Tuesday.
Orange County Superior Court Judge Lance Jensen denied Guy Michael Scott’s motion for a new trial based on a new law, but then reduced his murder conviction to manslaughter. Since he has been behind bars for 44 years he has more than enough credits to be freed on a 10-year sentence for that charge.
Scott was convicted in 1984 of first-degree murder and robbery and sentenced to 25 years to life in the 1981 killing of Larry Miner in the victim’s Fullerton apartment.
Scott was “out of his mind happy, just shaking,” his attorney, Scott Sanders, said.
“He went from 25 to 69 in there. You can see it, but he’s enormously grateful for this opportunity,” Sanders said. “He has a new lease on life. This is one of the best moments anyone can have in their (legal) career.”
Jensen also acknowledged the emotional moment, noting how justice was done, Sanders said.
“It’s way too late and took far too long,” Sanders added. “But he’s enormously grateful to walk free and not die in prison.”
Scott will turn to a facility in Northern California that helps prisoners with transitional services, Sanders said.
Scott filed the motion for relief on his own in 2019 under a new law requiring more direct responsibility for murder for those convicted under the now-defunct theory of being and aider and abetter to a killing. The Orange County Public Defender’s Office was assigned to represent him and Sanders later joined the case before he retired from the agency.
Before Sanders — who made headlines unearthing the informant scandal that rocked the Orange County Sheriff’s Department and District Attorney’s Office — left the Public Defender’s Office, he pushed for a new trial for Scott with a motion alleging that former DA Tony Rackauckas, the original prosecutor in the case, wrongly used an informant.
Scott was convicted, along with Peter McDonald, who was tried separately. A third co-defendant, Robert Neary, testified for the prosecution and had his murder charge dismissed, according to Sanders.
McDonald, who has since died, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after prosecutors failed twice to prevail in the death penalty phases of his trial.
Scott, who was denied parole multiple times, was convicted based on the testimony of Neary, Sanders said.
Prosecutors indicated in court papers they intended to resist Scott’s motion for a new trial based on statements he made at parole hearings, but Sanders countered that he never admitted to having any part in the killing.
Prosecutors said in court papers that Scott, McDonald and Neary arrived in Long Beach on a bus trip from Florida in May 1981. They had little money and were stranded at the Greyhound station with nowhere to stay, prosecutors said.
Miner and two friends asked the trio if they had any marijuana, which led them to ask for money for a cup of coffee, prosecutors said. Miner and his friends treated them to coffee and doughnuts at a Denny’s and Miner drove them to the house of his friends and left them there.
The next morning when Scott, Neary and McDonald had coffee with one of Miner’s friends they were asked if they would work as prostitutes and they apparently showed some interest in that, prosecutors said.
Scott then had sex with two men in exchange for $30 and later they flopped at the home of someone else they met, prosecutors said. On May 25, 1981, they saw someone forget a bag and when they picked it up, found $50 inside so they went somewhere to drink and play pool, according to prosecutors.
When they got down to $5 they discussed plans to rob one of their benefactors of his ring, but on May 27 met up with Miner and went to his apartment in Fullerton and drank beers, prosecutors said.
When it came time for bed, Miner asked if any of the men wanted to sleep with him and Scott did so, prosecutors said. Later, when the victim offered the other men money to perform sex acts with him, McDonald allegedly attacked him and they scrounged through the victim’s room for money.
Miner was tied up, beaten and stabbed. His cause of death was asphyxiation and his wallet and car were stolen.
Sanders argued that Neary’s description of Scott’s role changed over time with Scott’s involvement surging and Neary’s role diminishing.
Rackauckas flipped Neary from “accomplice to key prosecution witness after he and Fullerton detective Antonio Hernandez interviewed Neary,” Sanders alleged in his motion for a new trial.
Rackauckas instructed Hernandez to turn off his tape recorder during their two-hour interview, Sanders said. Rackauckas, who handed off the case later to another prosecutor, was compelled to testify in two preliminary hearings about the Neary interview, Sanders said.
The DA testified he wanted the tape recorder off because, “I didn’t want anybody to have a verbatim account of the entire interview I had with Neary the first time,” Sanders said.
“It was a simple, straightforward analysis by a win-at-all-costs prosecutor who reasonably feared that a conviction would be more difficult to achieve if the defense and a jury could study all that was said,” Sanders said.
Sanders argued that Neary was coerced into flipping on the co-defendants when he was threatened with the death penalty. Neary claimed Scott kicked and helped tie up the victim, Sanders said.
Sanders accused Rackauckas of leading efforts from 1998 through 2018 to “hide truths about how jail-house informant evidence was obtained and disclosed in Orange County.”
The same argument was made in the unraveling of the death-penalty case against Scott Dekraai, the worst mass killer in county history and a man Sanders also represented, who ultimately pleaded guilty to the mass killings and escaped the ultimate punishment.
Sanders and an investigator in February went to New York City to confront Neary, who insisted they had the wrong person and slammed the door shut on them, Sanders said.
Weeks later, however, a prosecutor assigned to the case started looking for evidence and found a 1982 interview with jail-house informant David Vogel by another prosecutor who did a second interview with investigator Craig Lundsford to allow for Neary to remain a star witness, Sanders said.
Vogel said Neary admitted cutting the victim, which would have given Scott’s defense attorney at the time, John Barnett, more ammunition to impeach the credibility of the star witness, Sanders argued.
Scott could have had a better chance at parole over the years if he had admitted and shown remorse for a direct role in the killing, but he refused to do that, Sanders noted.
“He always said Neary made that up and that he never kicked” the victim, Sanders said. “In all this time he refused, even when there was no question it would have been helpful to him … I think he wouldn’t because Neary made it up and he just wouldn’t do it. He obviously never caused the death … They came up with the aider and abetter theory with Neary’s help.”