High Court Spares California Arsonist A Death Sentence
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
WASHINGTON — A Los Angeles murderer who burned down the house of his therapist and killed her husband in the blaze 24 years ago has been spared a death sentence.
On Monday, the Supreme Court refused a plea from state prosecutors to a review a ruling of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that overturned William Clark’s death sentence for murder and arson.
The court’s action leaves intact Clark’s conviction for first-degree murder, attempted murder, and arson, meaning he likely will remain in prison.
“I’m disappointed that the Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal. This was a carefully calculated, cold-blooded, horrific murder, and there was never any doubt about the defendant’s guilt,” a deputy attorney general in Los Angeles, Scott Taryle, said.
The state and the 9th Circuit Court disagreed over whether the arson in this case qualified as a “special circumstance” that made Clark eligible for the death penalty.
In 1982, Clark was angry at his therapist, Asa Gawronski, after she refused to continue to counsel him. He concocted a plot to set her west Los Angeles home ablaze, and then to shoot and kill her husband when he fled the fire.
In the early morning hours of January 6, Clark threw a bucket of gasoline and highway flares into the house. But rather than escaping, David Gawronski was badly burned and died eight days later. His wife suffered severe burns but survived. Clark surrendered to police the next day and confessed. At his trial, Clark took the witness stand and explained that his plan had gone awry. Shortly after throwing the gasoline into the house, he heard screams and determined he had set the bedroom ablaze.
“I realized at that point that I was not going to do what I’d set out to do specifically,” Clark said. His plan to shoot the fleeing husband “was no longer operable,” he explained. So, he went to the other side of the house and ignited a gasoline fire there, trapping the couple in the burning house.
A jury convicted Clark of murder and attempted murder. And after finding him guilty of the “special circumstance” of an arson-murder, the jury said he should be sentenced to death.
The California Supreme Court upheld Clark’s conviction and death sentence, as did a federal judge.
In March, however, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit reversed the death sentence.
