Lawyer Accused in Death Plot Cites Delusions

LOS ANGELES — A Costa Mesa lawyer, charged with hiring a hit man to kill his father and a former business associate, is a “rotten egg” who has suffered severe mental problems since childhood, his defense attorney told jurors Tuesday.

Joseph W. Shambaugh, 31, previously pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to charges in a federal indictment issued in April.

Shambaugh and a co-defendant, who died in June, were charged with hiring a hit man to kill Shambaugh’s father, Walter, a retired Anaheim attorney. The men were also charged with plotting to kill the younger Shambaugh’s former business associate, Steven Szu Hong Sung. Neither was actually harmed.

Thought Father Was Devil

“Shambaugh believed (that) his father was the devil and that he was the spawn of the devil,” Brent Carruth, Shambaugh’s attorney, told the federal court jury during opening statements Tuesday. Shambaugh’s mental problems began at the age of 7, after he was stricken with viral encephalitis, a brain inflammation, he said.

Carruth said Shambaugh does not deny that he gave a handgun, silencer and two pairs of rubber gloves to an FBI agent posing as a hit man in February, 1985. But Carruth maintained that Shambaugh was insane at the time and said several physicians will testify about his mental condition.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Jon C. Cederburg, government prosecutor, said: “We are going to show that he (Shambaugh) knew what he was doing.”

Cederburg said William Henry Darnold, Shambaugh’s co-defendant and former client, died of a heart attack three months ago in prison, where he was serving a federal sentence for selling cocaine to an undercover agent.