Prosecutors Will Ask New Jury to Give D’Arcy Death

SANTA ANA — Prosecutors will ask a second jury to decide if Jonathan D’Arcy should be executed for burning a bookkeeper to death in a dispute over a paycheck.

As prosecutors announced their decision Friday, D’Arcy vowed to continue a hunger strike and said he will boycott the retrial as he did much of the original trial.

“I’m still protesting peacefully,” D’Arcy said during a brief court hearing Friday, a feeding tube dangling from his nose.

A previous jury found D’Arcy guilty of first-degree murder, torture and mayhem in the 1993 slaying of Karen Marie LaBorde in her Tustin business office. But the panel deadlocked 10 to 2 in favor of sentencing the 34-year-old former janitor to death.

The second penalty phase will begin Feb. 18 and last about a month, attorneys said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Molko has urged a death sentence, alleging D’Arcy was seeking revenge over a paycheck he thought was being withheld from him when he doused LaBorde, 42, with gasoline and set her on fire with a cigarette lighter on Feb. 2, 1993.

Defense attorney George A. Peters urged jurors to sentence D’Arcy to life in prison without parole, saying the defendant has a long history of mental illness.

D’Arcy, who denies igniting the woman, began a hunger strike Nov. 13 and said he will continue starving himself until his allegations of evidence tampering and other issues are addressed.

Another judge has ordered jail medical personnel to force feed D’Arcy with a tube until the question of his sentence is resolved.