New Trial Ordered In Goldmark Killings Rice’s Legal Help Faulted By Judge

Federal Judge Jack Tanner on Friday ordered a new trial for David Lewis Rice, convicted in the brutal slayings of a Seattle family of four on Christmas Eve 1985.

Tanner held that Rice did not receive effective legal assistance in either the guilt or penalty phase of his trial on aggravated first-degree murder charges. He had pleaded innocent by reason of insanity.

Rice had been sentenced to death in the case but the death sentence had been thrown out, restored, then returned to Tanner’s court.

Rice showed little emotion at Tanner’s decision.

State attorneys were expected to appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

“We’re obviously really disappointed and pretty surprised,” Tom Young, an assistant state attorney general, told The Seattle Times. “I think it’s real easy to say today that an attorney should have done things differently … but there never was a dispute that he committed very brutal crimes.”

Tony Savage, who joined the defense team during Rice’s murder trial, said he was “very happy for David. I think any time you save a life, it’s terrific.”

Rice had been sentenced to die for killing Charles and Annie Goldmark and their sons Colin, 10, and Derek, 12.

Rice said he killed the family because he believed Goldmark, a prominent lawyer, was Jewish and a Communist. Goldmark was neither.

The case was returned to Tanner after a series of rulings in which Rice’s death penalty was struck down and then reinstated by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year.

Tanner threw out the death sentence because, when the jury verdict to impose capital punishment was read in court, Rice was not present. He was in a hospital following an apparent suicide attempt. A three-judge appeals panel agreed with Tanner, but an 11-judge appeals panel restored the death sentence pending further hearings on Rice’s other claims.

In this week’s hearing before Tanner, Rice’s current lawyers argued that his first lawyer, the late Bill Lanning, was incompetent in defending him. They said Lanning allowed police to question Rice without a lawyer present and that Rice confessed.

Rice told police he used a toy gun to gain access to the family’s Madrona home.

Rice’s current lawyers argued that Lanning was not physically up to trying a capital punishment case.

They also questioned whether the King County deputy prosecutors who tried the case - William Downing and Robert Lasnik, now both King County Superior Court judges - withheld a psychological report diagnosing Rice with paranoid delusional disorder. They argued that information might have convinced the jury to acquit Rice on grounds of insanity.

But Tanner ruled that Lasnik and Downing did nothing wrong. He pinned the absence of key information regarding Rice’s mental health on Lanning’s incompetence.