Ng’s Attorneys Set to Argue Competence

SANTA ANA — In yet another twist in the legal saga surrounding accused serial killer Charles Ng, attorneys representing the former Marine go to court today to try to prove themselves wrong.

The latest chapter in the case--expected to be one of the longest and costliest in California history--centers on whether Ng is mentally competent to stand trial for a dozen killings committed in 1984 and 1985 in Calaveras County.

Ng’s court-appointed attorneys acknowledge their position is nothing less than “schizophrenic” in nature.

Deputy public defenders William Kelley and James Merwin will be arguing that Ng is not competent to stand trial. The attorneys also want access to sealed court records to be used in an upcoming hearing on Ng’s mental state.

The same attorneys are then prepared to use this argument against their own motion: Their client objects to being ruled mentally incompetent and the request to unseal court records would violate attorney-client confidentiality.

“Counsel regret the schizophrenic nature of this pair of pleadings, but offer them anyway because they feel they must in order to adequately represent defendant’s mutually inconsistent--but equally important--interests,” Kelley stated in a pair of motions filed recently in Orange County Superior Court.

The attorneys complain that they find themselves in this “dilemma” because of Judge John J. Ryan’s refusal to appoint Ng’s attorney of choice to represent him. The attorneys said they may be faced with testifying against their own client during the competency hearing--a move that they consider to pose a serious conflict of interest.

Ng claims to have a mental illness that prevents him from putting his trust and confidence in his current attorneys. He claims his problems with his current and former defense attorneys are “driven by their incompetence and not his mental disorder,” according to legal documents.

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Ng’s attorneys contend that their client has an “irrational obsession” with having his original defense attorney, San Francisco Deputy Public Defender Michael Burt, reappointed to the case.

“This obsession has prevented defendant from cooperating with his appointed counsel,” Kelley states in court records. “. . . Facing trial for his life, all defendant can think about is his desire to be reunited with Mr. Burt.”

Ng has fought for years to have Burt appointed to the case. And at one point, he demanded to represent himself. This has led to numerous delays in a case that began shortly after Ng’s 1985 arrest in Canada. He fought extradition for six years until Canada’s Supreme Court sent him back to California.

Ryan last fall appointed Burt to join Kelley and Merwin in defending Ng, but Burt has said he considers such a teaming an “unworkable situation.”

Kelley has said that a competency trial would not be needed if he were replaced by Burt. But Ryan has said that such a hearing must take place regardless of who represents Ng at his criminal trial.

According to defense legal briefs, Ng believes the competency trial that is being sought by his current attorneys is proof that they are “deliberately refusing to provide him legally adequate assistance.”

Legal experts said Thursday that Ng’s attorneys appear to have had little choice but to proceed in this manner. “They are doing what they should do,” said Marguerite Downing, chair of the criminal law section executive committee of the State Bar of California.

“People don’t realize we are representing our client and sometimes they want things that aren’t in their best interests,” said Downing, a deputy public defender in Los Angeles County.

Robert Pugsley, professor of criminal law at Southwestern University School of Law in Los Angeles said that “while on the surface [the dueling motions] are obviously totally inconsistent, each one represents a position that Mr. Ng quite recently voiced to the court.”

The criminal proceedings in the case were suspended last month by Ryan so that the trial to determine Ng’s competency could be held first.

The case was moved to Orange County in 1994 because of widespread publicity in Calaveras County, where most of the victims lived.