COURT OVERTURNS MURDER CONVICTION.

Byline: Daily News Staff and Wire Services

The state Supreme Court on Monday overturned a murder conviction and death sentence in a Pacoima killing, finding that a veteran prosecutor committed ``outrageous and unethical'' misconduct by misstating evidence, ridiculing the defense lawyer and trying to intimidate a witness.

Among other things, Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Rosalie Morton falsely said the blood on a knife had been identified as the murder victim's, misstated testimony by an eyewitness, described a victim's surgical scar as a stab wound, and told jurors, without evidence, that defendant Shawn Hill of Pacoima had killed in the past and gotten away with it, the court said.

To make matters worse, the justices said, the trial judge blamed the defense lawyer for some of his adversary's errors, mishandled the testimony of a court bailiff and wrongly instructed the jury on an important issue of death penalty law. The state Supreme Court decision was unanimous.

``What they did was decide that the whole trial was fundamentally unfair,'' said lawyer and law professor Paul Spiegelman, who represented Hill.

Hill, now 38, was convicted of robbing and fatally stabbing Stuart Margetts after trying to sell him phony rock cocaine in the parking lot of a Pacoima apartment building in August 1986. Hill was also convicted of attempting to murder Ronald Johnson, who was stabbed in a similar incident two days later but survived. The ruling grants him a new trial on all charges.

As a part of its ruling, the court referred Morton to the State Bar of California for a possible disciplinary investigation. Three previous courts since 1974 have found prosecutorial misconduct by Morton in other cases, the justices noted.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office has not yet decided whether to retry the case, spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons said Monday.

``We have to evaluate the case, go over the file and see,'' she said.

Beyond that, the office had no response to the court decision, Gibbons said.

Spiegelman said the ruling was a welcome rebuke to prosecutors with win-at-all-cost attitudes. He said Morton's record was well-known, but the District Attorney's Office has never done anything to curb her.

Morton said she had no regrets and would try the case the same way again if it were assigned to her.

Morton, who joined the District Attorney's Office in 1970, is known for hardball tactics, which occasionally have offended appellate courts. A 1977 ruling found 20 transgressions by her in a robbery trial, including threatening to kick the defense lawyer in the ankle and hit him in the face. That conviction was nevertheless upheld, and she boasted of the case when it was brought up in a trial a decade later, according to a reviewing court.

In Hill's case, the court said Morton committed numerous acts of misconduct, including:

Her claim that blood on one of the knives had been precisely identified as belonging to the victim, Margetts. In fact, it had been identified only as Type O, shared by 48 percent of the population, the court said.

Her false denial to the jury that a witness had described the killer as about 5 feet 4 inches, or six inches shorter than Hill.

Her statement that Hill had tried to ``rip (the) chest open'' of the surviving victim, Johnson, based on a 10-inch scar found on his chest. Hospital records showed the scar came from surgery, the court said.

Her claims, without evidence, that no similar crimes had occurred in the area since Hill's arrest, and that Hill had killed in the past and gotten away with it.