Goodwin’s Day in Court, Any Year Now

Michael Goodwin sounds unusually upbeat for a guy who nearly got out of jail after 2 1/2 years -- only to learn he’ll soon be charged in a different county. You wonder how long that will last.

My prediction: not long.

Pretty soon, I’d guess, Goodwin will realize all over again he’s in the clutches of a legal system not designed for easy exits for double-murder suspects.

For now, though, he’s saying that the decision this week by the Los Angeles district attorney’s office to charge him for the 1988 murders of Mickey and Trudy Thompson frees him from a corrupt Orange County prosecution that never got to trial but kept him in custody since December 2001.

“I am more focused and determined ... than ever,” he says from an Orange County jailhouse telephone. “I’m kind of surprised that this didn’t get me down more [than it has].”

Goodwin, 59, was on the brink of freedom last week because Orange County decided not to appeal an earlier ruling that it didn’t have the proper jurisdiction to charge him with the murders. But Goodwin’s 30 months in jail now will be continued in Los Angeles County, as the meter starts running all over again on a possible trial.

Goodwin doesn’t malign the Los Angeles D.A.’s office as he did its Orange County counterpart. Goodwin says he may insist on a preliminary hearing within 10 days of his arraignment, which would happen soon after L.A. charges him.

He’d do that, he says, because he’s optimistic about getting charges dropped at a preliminary hearing. The heart of his defense has been that the Los Angeles County sheriff’s detective leading the investigation lied under oath at the original preliminary hearing, and Goodwin says his team has more information now than it did then to refute the detective.

But this is where the realities of the justice system may thwart him. For starters, Goodwin is looking for a new trial attorney to replace Jeffrey Benice. A new attorney may require lots of time to learn the intricacies of the case. Even staunch Goodwin defender Jeffrey Friedman -- the attorney who successfully handled the appeals that won Goodwin’s release from Orange County -- says he isn’t certain he’d advise Goodwin to push for a speedy preliminary hearing.

“That’s a very, very tough call,” Friedman says. “Let me put it this way. I don’t feel I could advise him to do that unless he had an attorney familiar with the case.... If I had any part of this, I would not risk the loss of a preliminary hearing by going to it long before I was ready.”

Instead, Friedman says Goodwin should request bail, which could be granted even though it’s a capital case.

The reality is that the trial -- assuming Goodwin doesn’t assemble an O.J. Simpson-like “dream team” of lawyers to expedite his cause -- could easily be more than a year away.

Goodwin’s frustration and anger are understandable. He won his legal argument that Orange County improperly charged him. Now he watches as the baton is handed off to Los Angeles County.

Goodwin’s indignant inner circle says the case is no stronger now than during the many years Los Angeles prosecutors showed no interest in it, even though the murders occurred in L.A. County. They suspect L.A. Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley is picking up the cudgel for Orange County D.A. Tony Rackauckas.

Cooley spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons dismisses that. She says new evidence has emerged in recent years and that veteran trial attorney Patrick Dixon “looked through all this stuff and it’s his determination this is a fileable case.”

With an upbeat Goodwin still on the phone, I say he’ll finally get his chance to back up what he’s said about his innocence.

“I’m happy to pick up the gauntlet,” he says.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at [email protected]. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.