Killer to Get New Judge for Hospital-Release Hearing

A state appellate court has ordered that a new judge hear a convicted murderer’s plea for release from a state psychiatric hospital, stating that the Van Nuys Superior Court judge who had been hearing the case may have acted emotionally, rather than objectively, when she denied the release last spring.

A three-judge panel of the 2nd District Court of Appeal ordered a new hearing for the murderer, Arlyne Louise Genger, 43.

The unanimous ruling, issued Friday, disappointed defense attorneys, who had hoped for Genger’s immediate release from Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino, where she has been confined since January, 1981. Instead, the appellate court ordered the new hearing, which, under state law, Genger would have been entitled to anyway.

“The only thing we can be thankful for is that we’ll be before another judge,” Deputy Public Defender Victor M. Salerno, who argued the appeal, said Tuesday.

Genger was convicted of murder, and was committed to Patton after a judge found her to have been insane when she killed her mother and attempted to kill her daughter in the family’s North Hollywood apartment on New Year’s Day, 1980. Genger admitted that she stabbed her mother repeatedly and slashed her daughter’s throat with a razor blade.

Under terms of her commitment, Genger can be held for life, but is eligible for a release hearing every six months. To win release, Genger must convince a judge that she has been rehabilitated.

During hearings in Van Nuys Superior Court in October, 1985, and April, 1986, officials from Patton and the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health recommended that Genger be released from the hospital and placed in an outpatient psychiatric program. The officials said they believed that Genger no longer poses a threat to society.

After each hearing, Judge Darlene E. Schempp denied Genger’s request for release. The April ruling was appealed by defense attorneys, who argued for an outright reversal of the judge’s decision and Genger’s immediate release.

In issuing her April ruling, Schempp said she was impressed by the testimony of six mental health experts and that Genger was “very, very close” to winning release. But the judge also said she would be more comfortable waiting several months to ensure that Genger’s mental condition is stable.

“I have the fear that the mental problems could resurface so that she would be a danger to others and to the community,” Schempp said.

Losing Sleep Over Case

Schempp said in her April ruling that the case caused her to lose sleep at night and that she could only go “by what I feel in my heart.”

Such feelings, however, left the appeals court with “an abiding concern” that Schempp had relied on “inappropriate subjective feelings,” Friday’s opinion stated.

The ruling stressed that the justices were not passing judgment on whether Genger should be released, only on whether Schempp may have made her decision for the wrong reasons.

“I’m very disappointed,” said Deputy Public Defender William Misener, who represented Genger in the Superior Court hearings. “It sounds like they passed the buck.”

Schempp said Tuesday that she had no quarrel with the court’s ruling and that she is happy to relinquish the “difficult” case to another judge.

If Genger “felt she didn’t get a fair hearing, I’m glad there’s a chance for someone else to get a fresh start on the case,” Schempp said.

The new hearing is expected to be scheduled in the next several weeks, attorneys in the case said.