Tanner has called mistrial for paranoid suspect with bad attorney, in past

[Norm D'Plume]

On October 11, Federal District Judge Jack Tanner ordered that David
Rice be given a new trial. Rice, 38, was
originally sentenced to die for the 1985 Christmas Eve slayings of
Charles and Annie Goldmark and their two
sons, Derek, 12, and Colin, 10, at their Seattle home. Charles Goldmark
was a celebrated civil-liberties
attorney, as was his father, John; Rice had confused Charles with John
and incorrectly thought that John
Goldmark was a Communist and Jewish. Tanner ruled that Rice's first
lawyer, Bill Lanning, had inadequately
defended him. Rice's current lawyers argued that Lanning, who was in his
seventies during the trial and has since
died, was physically unable to keep up with a capital-punishment case.
They said that Lanning allowed police to
extract a confession from his client without an attorney present, and he
didn't object to the confession being
admitted into evidence during trial. They said that these actions were
devastating to Rice's case.

Rice's attorneys also contended that Lanning incompetently prepared for
the penalty phase of the trial. Thorough
preparation, they said, would have unearthed a psychiatrist's evaluation
that Rice suffers from paranoid
delusional disorder, supporting the contention that he was not guilty by
reason of insanity. "That evidence about
mental illness would have made a difference, and the jury never heard
it," Peter Offenbecher, one of Rice's
attorneys, said.

http://www.scn.org/activism/wcadp/winter98.html