Ex-Policeman Escapes Death Penalty in Hired Killing

Former Los Angeles police detective Richard Herman Ford no longer faces possible execution for the 1983 contract murder of a Northridge businessman.

County prosecutors ruled out the death penalty Friday by announcing they will not seek to retry the penalty phase of Ford’s trial, which ended with jurors unable to agree on a verdict. A judge cannot impose a death sentence unless unanimously recommended by a jury.

Van Nuys Superior Court jurors convicted Ford in October of murdering Thomas Weed, a debt collector and small business owner. But they disagreed over the sentence, with 11 favoring life imprisonment without possibility of parole and one favoring the death penalty.

Prosecution Reasoning

In deciding not to retry the punishment phase of the trial, prosecutors said they were influenced by the nearly unanimous opposition of jurors to the death penalty and the considerable expense of a new trial.

“We tried our best case,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Lonnie Felker said outside court after announcing the decision. “We don’t feel it would be appropriate to go forward and try it again.”

Superior Court trials generally cost about $5,000 a day, not including defense attorney fees, prosecutors said.

Although a new jury would not be allowed to decide guilt or innocence, prosecutors would have had to retry the entire case to give jurors a foundation for sentencing.

Ford smiled as the decision was announced. But Rickard Santwier, one of his attorneys, said, “It’s hard to have a good feeling when your client is going to spend the rest of his life in jail.”

Superior Court Judge Darlene Schempp has a number of options available at sentencing, scheduled for Jan. 20. She could impose a maximum term of life in prison with or without the possibility of parole, or she could reduce the conviction to second-degree murder, which could mean a sentence of as little as 15 years to life, Felker said.

Ford, 48, of Northridge and another Los Angeles police officer, Robert Von Villas, 44, of Simi Valley, were convicted by separate juries of murder and conspiracy to murder Weed in exchange for $20,000 from Weed’s ex-wife.

Jurors in the Von Villas case recommended a sentence of life without possibility of parole. He is to be sentenced Jan. 26.

Both men, who were on the police force at the time of their crimes, were sentenced earlier this year to 35 years in prison for attempting to kill a Granada Hills exotic dancer in 1983 to collect on a life insurance policy, and for a 1982 Northridge jewelry store robbery.

Jailhouse Tapes

Also Friday, Ford’s attorneys filed a motion seeking more information about a jailhouse informant, Anthony Love, who did not testify during the Weed trial but whose statements they say were used to seek a warrant to tape-record jailhouse conversations between Ford and his wife.

On the recordings, which were played to jurors, Ford said, “There’s no body.” He also expressed concern about authorities finding a gun.

Defense Arguments

Defense attorneys argue that the prosecution should be required to establish Love’s credibility. If that cannot be done, they said, the verdict should be overturned because the recordings should not have been admissible.

The district attorney’s office is currently under criticism because a jailhouse informant, through a series of telephone calls from his jail cell, demonstrated that it is possible to learn enough details of a crime to deceive prosecutors into believing that he had heard a defendant confess in jail.

Details about Love were not available Friday.