Trial Costs May Be Secret Until Execution : Judge Won’t Give Final Tally Until Murderer’s Appeals Are Exhausted

While his case almost certainly will be among the most expensive in California history, Randy Steven Kraft may be executed before the public knows the cost of his trial.

Superior Court Judge Luis A. Cardenas, who sealed the defense ledgers five years ago, said this week that he doesn’t plan to unseal them until all of Kraft’s appeals are exhausted. Unless Kraft is granted a new trial, the final appeal would continue to the moment Kraft steps into the gas chamber at San Quentin State Prison.

“I may not even be here when that day finally comes, but until I get some guidance from the courts, my plan is to keep everything sealed,” Cardenas said this week.

That plan means that legal experts can only speculate how expensive Kraft’s trial, paid by taxpayers, might be.

Initial Estimates

Three years ago, the district attorney’s office estimated to the Board of Supervisors that the bill for Kraft’s defense would be $2 million. Kraft’s lawyers, however, called the figure “ridiculously high.”

But Orange County court administrator Alan Slater said the trial no doubt will rank as the most expensive ever in Orange County. Some lawyers and judges in the county have estimated its total cost at a minimum of $10 million.

By comparison, the costs in the McMartin preschool case in Los Angeles County are listed at $11.1 million for the first five years, up to the end of 1988, according to county auditor-controller records.

Cardenas said that the monthly costs of the Kraft case are lower than those in the McMartin molestation case, according to information he has. Both cases began six years ago.

Higher Staff Costs

The average daily cost of a criminal trial is $7,100, according to a Los Angeles County Superior Court study due for completion soon. But the Kraft case could cost more than that because of the number of lawyers and the paid experts who testified.

On the district attorney’s side, the Kraft case has involved one prosecutor and three full-time investigators. But other lawyers in the office have worked on the case at times. Also, Deputy Dist. Atty. Bryan F. Brown has relied on a battery of pathologists, crime lab experts, and others who were paid for their testimony.

Also, prosecutors have had to pay expenses of witnesses flown in from Oregon and Michigan, where Kraft is accused of killing eight people.

On the defense side, two lawyers have worked full time on the Kraft case for five years. A third lawyer has worked almost full time for four years. The lawyers have hired at least five private investigators, two paralegals, a criminalist with as many as five others working for him at one point, and a variety of other experts, such as specialists in computer graphics and photography, for example.

Raises for the Defense

Most of these people not only have been on the payroll year after year, but Cardenas grudgingly has allowed most of them cost-of-living raises. Kraft’s two trial lawyers, for example, began at $75 an hour, but got a raise to $90 an hour. Their legal motions expert, William J. Kopeny, was paid $50 an hour, and then refused to join in a request for more pay.

Cardenas said he has no guarantee that the defense money was always spent wisely. But he added he has high confidence in the integrity of Kraft’s attorneys.

“I can say that Mr. Kraft will never be able to argue he did not get a fair trial because he has not been properly funded,” Cardenas said. “We have spent a lot of money on his behalf.”

Two issues could force Cardenas to change his mind about keeping the cost figures sealed.

One is the Joselito Cinco case in San Diego County. Cinco committed suicide in prison last year a few months after he was sentenced to death for the murder of two San Diego police officers.

Cinco Case Cited

Prosecutors in that case want the defense costs released to the public. With Cinco dead, they argue, no one can say public access to the figures could affect any new trial for him. But Cinco’s lawyers have been joined by many leaders among the county’s trial lawyers. They do not want the figures released, ever. “I’m watching that case very carefully to see what happens,” Cardenas said. “Certainly it could affect what I end up doing in the Kraft case.”

When Cardenas was assigned by the court to oversee the defense costs, he not only sealed the records of the defense lawyers’ expenses, as the law requires, but also of their fees, as a precaution against any unfavorable pretrial publicity about it.

“None of us wanted to see a change of venue to another county,” Cardenas said. “That could have meant three times the expenses.”

Cardenas has said before that the Kraft case could set a precedent in the state for expenses. But after reading the McMartin case figures, Cardenas said he could only guess that the Kraft case will be among the most expensive in the state.

‘Public’s Right to Know’

Court administrator Slater said he does not plan to spend any time adding up the costs in the case unless the courts request it.

“I understand the public’s right to know, but to be honest, it has no real meaning to me,” Slater said.

Cardenas said he also recognizes the value in the argument that the public has the right to know how its money was spent, especially when so much money was involved.

But he won’t unseal the records because it is always possible that Kraft could win a new trial, and release of the figures could affect a future jury.

“At some point, you have to have faith in someone in the system,” the judge said.