Charles Chitat Ng Trial: 1998-99

On April 8, 1994, Ng got a change of venue from Calaveras County, in Northern California's "Mother Lode" country, to Orange County, between Los Angeles and San Diego. A poll had shown that 98 percent of the population of Calaveras County was familiar with the case, and most of them thought Ng was guilty.

But soon after the change of venue, affluent Orange County went bankrupt as a result of financial mismanagement. Ng's lawyer, Allyn Jaffrey, a public defender, told Judge Robert Fitzgerald, "This is a case that will cost the public millions upon millions of dollars" that were not available. The case could not be tried in Orange County, she said. By this time, the murders were 10 years old. California attorney general Dan Lundgren demanded that the county try Ng. But there was no money. Eventually, the state agreed to pay all expenses. William Kelley, the public defender who was to try the case, said that with the volume of records involved, it would take the defense at least 2 and one-half years to prepare its case. There were 350 boxes of documents, containing 100,000 pages and weighing six tons.

When the trial began on October 26, 1998, Ng pleaded not guilty. He contended he was only helping Lake, and didn't know anything about the murders. Lake was the leader in everything, he said. A psychiatrist, Dr. Stuart Grassian, testified that Ng was "a classic dependent personality." But jurors also heard from Richard Carrazza, who was shot and saw his roommate murdered by Ng in a robbery that did not involve Lake. Shown the videotapes by Prosecutor Sharlene Honnaka, Ng contended the threats he made to the victims on tape were only bluffs.

On February 24, 1999, the jury deadlocked on one of the 12 murders Ng was charged with, but found him guilty of the other 11. They also found that the circumstances warranted the death penalty. On June 30, Ng was sentenced to death for the murder of six men, three women and two babies. By that time, the case had cost $6.6 million, making it the most expensive homicide prosecution—even including the O.J. Simpson case—in California history.