Defense Lawyer Says Killer Intended to Murder, Not Steal

Estonian refugee Peter Sakarias should be spared from the gas chamber because his primary intent was to murder a North Hollywood woman and not to also burglarize her home, a defense attorney argued Friday.

The odd-sounding argument was advanced in the case of Peter Sakarias, 24, who could receive the death penalty if jurors decide the murder occurred with special circumstances of lying in wait, burglary and robbery.

Sakarias was convicted by a San Fernando Superior Court jury of murdering Viivi Piirisild, 52, in July, 1988.

Deputy Public Defender Daniel Blum told jurors that the two-week-long trial was not to determine whether Sakarias was guilty of murder.

“Is he guilty of murder?” Blum asked the jury. “Yes, of course he is.”

But Blum argued that the murder did not occur with the special circumstances that must be proven for the death penalty to be imposed.

Under California law, Sakarias can be guilty of special circumstances if his primary intent was to commit burglary or robbery and the murder was an outgrowth of those crimes, or if he had lain in wait to kill her.

Blum said Sakarias and his accomplice, Tauno Waidla, 23, broke into Piirisild’s home with the primary intent of killing her, and that the burglary was incidental.

The robbery occurred after the murder and also was incidental, he said.

Although the two men were at the house when Piirisild came home, they were not legally “lying in wait” because she had a chance to make a plea for mercy before being killed, Blum argued.

That plea served as an interruption in the events, indicating the two men did not simply wait for Piirisild and kill her immediately, he said.

However, Deputy Dist. Atty. Steven J. Ipsen told the jury that finding Sakarias guilty of murder without special circumstances would be “half justice . . . and half justice is no justice.”

Ipsen said the woman’s quick call for mercy did not meet the legal definition of an interruption of the events.

He argued that the men came to burglarize the house and to commit murder. “Their motivation was money,” he said.

In a taped confession played in court Tuesday, Sakarias said he and Waidla killed Piirisild because she had told people in the Estonian community not to help them because the two men were using drugs and had stolen from employers.

The defense presented no witnesses in the trial.

Sakarias and Waidla had been welcomed as heros by Estonians in 1987 after they defected from the Soviet army and escaped from East Germany.

But their relationship with Piirisild, who had befriended them, soured and both men ended up on the street.

In March, Waidla was sentenced to death in the gas chamber for his part in the slaying and burglary.