PROSECUTORS WON'T SEEK DEATH PENALTY.

Byline: Donna Huffaker Staff Writer

PASADENA - Los Angeles County prosecutors will not try again to seek the death penalty for a Glendale man convicted of killing his wife and six children in an arson fire, officials said Wednesday.

Jorjik Avanesian will spend the rest of his life in prison, now the District Attorney's Office will not seek to retry the deadlocked penalty phase of his trial, said spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons.

A Pasadena Superior Court jury deadlocked in July on whether to impose the death sentence or give Avanesian life without the possibility of parole. Jurors convicted the 44-year-old of seven counts of murder and one count of arson on June 30.

Gibbons would not say why the decision was made to settle for life without parole. Avanesian is scheduled to be sentenced today.

Life in prison or life in a mental institution were what Deputy Public Defender Stanley Perlo had hoped for his client, he said Wednesday.

``We're not happy about the whole situation but we feel this is the best possible outcome for Mr. Avanesian,'' he said.

Perlo did not enter an insanity plea on behalf of his client, because Avanesian does not believe he is insane, Perlo said.

In February 1996, four months after the Avanesian family emigrated to the United States from Iran, Jorjik Avanesian doused his family's one- bedroom apartment on Harvard Street with gasoline, igniting a fire in a room with no working windows. Witnesses said he watched the flames burn as his wife and children shrieked.

Prosecutors have said bystanders tried to help the screaming family but Avanesian, who was inside the apartment complex, would not unlock the gate and ignored the cries.

After his arrest on Feb. 6, Avanesian told authorities he killed and burned his family because he believed his wife, Turan, and his 17-year-old daughter were involved in pornography. Psychologists testified during the trial that those statements show Avanesian suffered from a delusional disorder.