News Scrapbook 1985

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San Diego, CA (San Diego Co.) Son Diego Union (Cir. D. 217,32-4) (Cir. S. 339,788)

L~wyers ode

San Diego, CA (San Diego Co.) Dally Transcript (Cir. D. 7,415)

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F.s r 1888

P. C. 8

~rsitt of San Diego's Univer- sity of the rhtrd Age, a physical ac- tivity and lecture series for people 55 and older, opens July 15, continues through Aug. 1. Walking class, slide presentations, tax law, games. Fee: $55 for series. Information: 260-4585 or~4600, Ext. 4296. -Z955""'~

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.JW~ri', ,xss 'AttorneysReveal Seli-Deffeebation USD Poll ay Public Likes Them Better, But Not Fee By P ULINE RI-:PARD . •• ()J'°"" D•lly Tt~n~mp4 fl'Wnt,r Do h,wyer really rule down ther mong u cd car s;,le m(•n m popul nty? Most .,ttorneya m San Di go think o, uccordmg to surv<'y condu led by II U111v r ,ty of n Diego law profossor, A meJonty 7li percent of th 357 lawyer an w nng th urv y how d a low If te m, bolt vmg tho public thmkR 111 of them But thut v, w w n't qmte boTn out in u tel phone survpy of 376 members of the public question d uhout lawyers 1-'orty two percent shared the lawy ' notion. What surpri d surv yor wa that another 35 per nt , d th y thmk th pubhc ot t1tud I gen r 1ly ,live The survey was only part of o project conceived two years ago by Robert L. S1mmo , profe sor of lil1gat1on cour s et U D for 10 yeors and a formP.r Ohio judge Blinded by a virus in 1978, he re turned to teaching and last year mounted an unsucces ful cam paign to un eat Rep. 8111 Lowery. The rest of Simmons' proj ct center d on a workshop attended by members of the public and th San Diego County Bar Association to work out so\ut1ons to some of the problems discovered through the survey. Some of the ideas, such as mak- ing information about the Lawyers Referral and Infonnation Service more available, have been put into effect, The county bar has made a pomt of makmg sure brochures on LRIS, which helps steer people to competent attorneys, are spread around the county . Other id es, such as expanding the bar's "Free Law at the Mall" program beyond its traditional Law Week observance, are cur- rently being discussed. Juhe Hegg, executive director of the bar asso- ciation, said a committee is plann- ing two to three more free law ses sions. Still other suggestions brought out m the workshop have ap parently died. One was that fee dispute arbitration between a client and attorney 'be binding. Teresa Kime, head of the bar's arbitration committee, said ar- bitration itself became mandatory in 1979. She said if there was any legislative debate on binding or- bitration, nothing came of it The written and telephone survey directed by Si mons was conducted in 1983, ith results (ContinuedonPa 112A) p C 8 I ,,

San Diego, CA (San Diego Co.) Evening Tribune (Cir. D. 127,454)

JUL 9 1985

..Jlflrn 's P c. B ,u, }}isciosure of murders recalled --- J:ls-It;i1e bragged of deaths, man says A convicted murderer and self-de- scribed "loser" linked a hitchhiking companion to the 1979 murder of a Normal Heights woman and her 3- year-old son. Jimmy Joe Nelson, 42, serving a 15-year sentence for manslaughter in the Texas Department of Correc- tions, testified yesterday that on a hitchhiking trip from Oakland to Los Angeles, his traveling companion, Johnny Massingale, bragged that he killed Suzanne Camille Jacobs, 31, and her son, Colin. Jacobs' husband, Michael, said outside the courtroom he didn't believe Nelson's testimony. Charges against Massingale for the May 4, 1979, double murders were dropped in January, when pro- secutors began to suspect David Allen Lucas of the crimes. Lucas is now in a preliminary hearing to see if be will stand trial for the Jacobs slayings and the mur- der of real estate agent Gayle Rober- ta Garcia, 29, whose body was found Dec. 8, 1981, in the bedroom of a va- cant Spring Valley house she had been showing to prospective renters. Lucas already faces an October trial date in the slaying last Novem- ber of ~versity of San Diego stu- dent All Catherine Swanke, 22; the slayings last October of Rhonda Strang, 24, and Amber Fisher,3, a child Strang was baby-sitting in her Lakeside home; and the attempted murder of Jody Santiago, 34. , , By Ann Levin Tribune Sill/I Writer

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" ss!ngaJe, 31, an illi- Y _ dr1!ter Who is m·ld emed th I • . e slayings de ier cont · • ession_ to the de confession was rued ever meet- the

spite an earl crimes. He coerced, and also I

ing Nelson. . Nelson was the fir/t witn~s to tes- tify for Lucas' defe11; e. Occasionally contradicting himself, t.,e toothless and disheveled witness admitted he is a "five-time loser" but said he in- formed on Massingale because "I ain't got no use for a child molester or rapist . . . . Anyone who'd brag about hurting a little baby is sick, and they don't deserve to be walking on the street. "He was bragging about this woman and kid he killed in East San Diego and the way he said it, I didn't know whether to believe him," N · son said about Massingale. "He ot started talking about what he'd one in California and said he'd cut their heads off." Nelson said he met Massingale in August 1979, after fleeing from the affections of a 650-pound California woman with whom he had developed a correspondence, through a "Lonely Hearts" club, while in an Alabama state prison. He said he "escaped" the woman's house after eight days and began hitchhiking from Oakland when he saw a van parked at a service station with Arkansas license plates and driven by John "Shorty" Smith. Lucas' attorney, William Saunders, said outside the courtroom he has been unable to locate Smith to corro- borate Nelson's testimony. Several months later, Nelson was arrested in Texas on unrelated mur- der charges. A co-defendant, David Ray Woods, tried to pin the murder.I'. o~elson. L i

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