The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 38

Cos Angeles Slimes Wednesday, January 20, 1988 Part I 3 Rule on Detaining Homeless Patients Passes Panel Test Panel OKs AIDS Donation Tax Write-Off By CARL INGRAM, Times Staff Writer SACRAMENTO-A Democratic -dominated Senate committee reversed itself Tuesday and approved legislation opposed by Gov. George Deukmcji-an that would authorize a state tax write-off for contributions to finance a cure for AIDS. Action by the Constitutional Amendments Committee was aimed at prodding the governor to negotiate and reach a compromise with supporters of substantially increased financing for AIDS research. The legislation would grant an income tax credit of up to 55 to businesses and individuals who contributed to a special AIDS research fund. (Tax credits, unlike deductions, are subtracted from the amount of taxes owed.

Last year, the governor vetoed a similar bill that had cleared the Legislature unanimously. This year, to avoid another possible veto, sup-Please see AIDS, Page 17 A protective sand berm has been bulldozed In front of Del Mar's Poseidon restaurant, which was hit DAVE GATLEY Los Angeles Times hard by storm waves on Monday. By DANIEL M. WEINTRAUB, Times Staff Writer SACRAMENTO Legislation aimed at keeping homeless people who are mentally ill off the streets by holding them longer against their will in county mental hospitals won bipartisan support Tuesday and cleared its first Assembly committee test. The bill, authored by Assemblywoman Doris Allen (R-Cypress) and sponsored by Los Angeles County, would allow county mental hospitals to hold patients involuntarily for an extra 30 days without the provisions of a court-approved conservatorship.

The measure, which is supported by a broad range of law enforcement and mental health officials as well as mental health advisory groups, was approved by the Assembly Health Committee 13-1 and sent to the Ways and Means Committee. Opposition Voiced Opponents, including the American Civil Liberties Union and patients' rights representatives, argued that the state's scarce mental health funds should be directed at helping people stay out of mental hospitals, not keeping them in. But pleas from county officials and parents of mentally ill patients appeared to sway the panel's subcommittee on mental health, which considered the measure during a two-hour hearing before recommending that the full committee approve it. Although the legislation would apply to all those with psychiatric illnesses, the bill is aimed at the homeless mentally ill, who, according to Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, account for as much as 35 of the county's homeless population. Current law allows county mental hospitals to hold patients for 72 STORM: San Diego County Begins Chore of Mopping, Fixing Up 1 1 JP IJ: 4, V.Ti,.....

J. Brown Ousts Another 'Gang of 5' Democrat, Gives His Post to GOP By JERRY GILLAM, Times Staff Writer DAVE GATLEY Los Angeles Times Poseidon restaurant employees Joe Ritter and Gina Caruso work to clear the Del Mar eatery's floors of storm debris and sand. Waves overwhelmed a deck and hurled outdoor furniture through windows, causing about $35,000 damage, said the owner. Continued from Page 1 A Coast Guard spokesman said it is believed that one of the two boats has capsized and that the man in the water was from one of the boats. The Coast Guard search is set to resume this morning.

Coastal residents from Imperial Beach to Oceanside breathed a sigh of relief as the morning high tide was not coupled with high winds. No further damage was reported. Winds were a gentle 10 m.p.h. and the crashing waves on Tuesday were picturesque, not ominous. A coastal flood warning was cancelled in mid-morning, although heavy surf warnings remained.

"It was those winds Sunday and Monday that were the killer," said Bill Wolf, emergency management coordinator for the city of San Diego. "We can take the storms and we can take the surf, but when we get the wind to back them up, that's the death blow." Enterprising San Diegans were quick to turn adversity into opportunity. Construction and window repair firms distributed handbills in Mission Beach and Pacific Beach offering to do home repair at reasonable prices. One resident put a sign offering to sell his newly-arrived load of seaweed. In Del Mar, retired actor Don Kennedy was the beneficiary of a wind-borne gift: A restored view of the ocean.

For a decade, through lawsuits and angry exchanges and then a political battle with City Hall, Kennedy had sought unsuccessfully to have his neighbors trim their trees so that he could once again see the ocean. On Monday, he awoke to find the offending trees toppled. "It was a total gift," Kennedy said. "I couldn't be more pleased." Others were not as lucky. Seven injuries were reported countywide during the two-day storm, including an Oceanside man who suffered broken ribs.

1983 Storm Was Worse Damage in the county was put at $6.8 million, including $2.5 million in damage to public property, $4 million to private property, and $320,000 in economic losses to businesses that were unable to open or otherwise lost customers. By comparison, the storms of January 1983 did an estimated $13.5 million damage. Damage estimates for the 250-mile stretch of ravaged coastline from Santa Barbara to the Mexican City of Ensenada topped $68 million and continued to climb Tuesday. In Redondo Beach, the city hit hardest by the surf, damage was estimated at more than $16 million. Although there was less dollar SACRAMENTO In an apparent move to enlist GOP help in squelching attacks from dissident Assembly Democrats, Speaker Willie Brown on Tuesday removed a fourth maverick Democrat from a committee chairmanship and gave the job to a Republican.

Assemblyman Rusty Areias (D-Los Banos) was ousted as chairman of the Governmental Efficiency and Consumer Protection Committee and replaced by Assemblyman Stan Statham (R-Oak Run). Areias is a member of the so-called "gang of "five" Democrats who have been challenging Brown's leadership. The most recent attack came last week when Areias and two other members of the rebel group challenged Brown's authority by serving notice that they will try to withdraw three pigeonholed bills from committee for showdown floor votes. The challenge could come as early as Thursday. Areias said he expected to lose his committee post for that action.

Asked why the Speaker removed Areias, Brown's press secretary, damage in San Diego County than 1983, there were more customers of San Diego Gas Electric Co. left without heat or electricity. At the high point of the storm, more than 40,000 customers were cold and dark, 40 percent of total. By late-afternoon Tuesday, the outage number had been reduced to a few hundred, mostly in central San Diego, according to spokesman Fred Vaughn. On Sunday afternoon, as winds up to 64 m.p.h.

howled through parts of the county, the company called in every available maintenance worker. "At the height we found it was futile to try to fix things," Vaughn said. "Linemen reported seeing things fly by horizontally and crash into power lines." At the Hotel Del Coronado, damage was set at $200,000 to a pavilion used for conventions and large parties. The San Diego Zoo, which failed to open as scheduled Monday for the first time in its 72-year history, reopened Tuesday but the rhinoceroses, zebras and orangutans were kept out of view because of damage to their enclosures. Zoo spokesman Jeff Jouett said the zoo suffered greater damage than any storm before, even one in 1980 that paralyzed the county, wiped out telephone service for a week in parts of North County and caused severe flooding in Mission Valley.

"The winds seemed to be twisting trees back and forth," Jouett said. "It wasn't exactly a whirlwind but it was a similar effect of pushing things at different angles. It was the worst we've ever had here." Comparisons with previous storms were common. "This storm was stronger and fiercer than 1983," Danon said. "But it just wasn't as extended.

Frankly we got away lucky this time. It centered over us for awhile and left. In '83, it battered us for several days." The National Weather Service predicted another rainless day for Wednesday, with winds from 10-17 m.p.h. and coastal temperatures upward of 60 degrees. A frost warning was in effect for inland areas.

Camille Spaulding, 33, was surveying the damage to her rented stucco home at 3633 Ocean Front Drive in Mission Beach on Tuesday. Three inches of mud covered her rug and her furniture was soggy. The front door was torn off its hinges by a relentless wave Monday. Her stereo and personal computer were ruined. Still, her personal papers were intact.

"The important stuff was not Please see STORM, Page 18 that saved the life of Coleman's white co-defendant. The court also rejected arguments from Coleman's lawyers that prosecutors had the burden of disproving that Coleman's strong record of community service and lack of any prior criminal background weighed heavily enough to mitigate against imposition of the death penalty. Coleman is the only black prisoner on Montana's Death Row. He and Robert Dennis Nank were charged in the rape, beating and hours without a hearing if a psychiatrist judges them to be a danger to themselves or others or gravely disabled by mental illness or chronic alcoholism. Patients may be held an additional 14 days Please see PATIENTS, Page 20 Susan Jetton, said: "If you don't want to play by the rules of the game, you can't expect to be the captain of a team." Statham said he did not make a "deal" with Brown to obtain the committee chairmanship.

He also declined to say how he would vote on the proposed bill withdrawals. "I don't make deals," he said. "I will make up my own mind on that. Sometimes I vote for those motions and sometimes I don't. I haven't made any arrangement on that." But Assemblyman Larry Stirling (R-San Diego), the only other Republican to chair an Assembly committee, said he will back the Speaker and vote against withdrawing the pigeonholed bills.

"I understood when I took the committee chairmanship that part of my obligation was to sustain the committee system," said Stirling, who heads the Public Safety Committee. "As long as I am a chairman, I will vote to sustain the committee system." It takes 41 yes votes to withdraw a bill from committee. Assuming no other Democrats break ranks with Please see BROWN, Page 22 out there that have similar appearances on the surface that you can put alongside the crimes my client was charged with and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference," Hernandez said. The district attorney's office last week asked the appeals court to re-hear the matter, arguing that to gather this data would place an "onerous" burden on them and "could easily delay this trial for another six months or more" because 48 separate police agencies would have to be canvassed. Even in those instances where the police agencies have access to computers, "the ultimate task of deciding if the case meets the criteria of 'similar crime or 'modus operandi' cannot be performed by a computer," prosecutors said in their petition for review.

"This requires review by a knowledgeable person who will Please see STALKER, Page 20 What Made Victims of Storm So Vulnerable? By FREDERICK M. MUIR, Times Staff Writer As they picked through the rubble Tuesday, beachfront homeowners and businessmen asked themselves: "Why me?" It's the same question scientists have been grappling with over the years as one winter storm after another takes it toll on Southland piers, beaches, homes and seaside restaurants. Why do these storms inflict such damage on one beach city and seem to pass right by the next? Scientists and other observers say that what happened over the weekend in Malibu, Redondo Beach, Huntington Beach and Laguna Beach could happen almost anywhere on the Southland coast. Distinguishing Characteristics The factors that made this storm so potent unusally high tides, slightly larger waves, high winds and eroded beaches are present in many winter storms and were not particularly severe in the latest, according to oceanographers and meteorologists. While there were some similarities in the areas that suffered most in the latest storm, such as narrow beaches and low inland areas, other coastal areas could just as easily have been hurt and, in fact, some of them took their lumps in similar 1983 winter storms.

What made the latest storm so destructive was development close to the water and the continuing erosion of beaches, said Douglas Inman, a professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla. Aside from restricting building near the coast, few steps can be Please see DAMAGE, Page 18 Court Order Could Delay Ramirez Trial Six Months By TERRY PRISTIN, Times Staff Writer Montana Black Man's Death Sentence Splits U.S. Court By KIM MURPHY, Times Staff Writer The long-delayed trial of accused Night Stalker Richard Ramirez may be postponed for six months or longer as a result of an appellate court order requiring the prosecution to supply additional information to the defense. In a writ of mandate issued Jan. 6, the Court of Appeal granted a defense request to obtain records of all crimes of a "similar nature" to the 13 murders with which Ramirez is charged that were committed in Los Angeles County six months before and during the so-called Night Stalker attacks in 1984 and 1985.

Co-defense counsel Daniel Hernandez said Tuesday that the information is necessary to cast doubt on the prosecution's theory that Ramirez is responsible for all 13 murders because they share a similar modus operandi. Ramirez is also charged with 30 other felonies. "I think there's enough crimes Coleman's early assertions of his innocence and in part on Nank's testimony that it was Coleman who initiated the murder. The 63-page majority opinion and 120-page dissent represent the widest-ranging discussion of the death penalty in recent years for the 9th Circuit, which is bracing for a flood of death penalty cases this year as appeals begin moving up from the lower courts in the West. As of late last year, there were 300 inmates on Death Row in the Please see SENTENCE, Page 21 eventual drowning of 21 -year-old Peggy Lee Harstad, who disappeared while driving alone from Harlowton to Rosebud in Montana on July 4, 1974.

Nank pleaded guilty to deliberate homicide and solicitation to commit sexual intercourse, charges which do not carry the death penalty, and testified against Coleman. Coleman attempted to negotiate a similar deal, but prosecutors rejected his offer and brought him to trial. The decision was based in part on A divided federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld the death sentence of a black man convicted of raping and killing a Montana school teacher, even though a dissenting judge insisted that Dewey E. Coleman "in all likelihood would not be facing execution if he were white." In one of the most sweeping opinions the court has rendered on capital punishment, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the right of prosecutors to reject Coleman's guilty plea to lesser charges while accepting an identical plea.