Probation Given in Court Shooting of Girl’s Killer

SAN FRANCISCO — A Los Angeles-area building contractor who shot and wounded his daughter’s killer during a court hearing here last year was ordered to serve 5,000 hours of community service and five years’ probation Wednesday after impassioned testimony by parents of other murder victims.

Superior Court Judge Laurence Kay imposed the penalty on Jack Spiegelman, 49, after listening to two hours of often-emotional testimony. Kay, who suspended a six-year prison sentence in favor of the service time and probation, said he also received more than 100 letters from across the country supporting the bereaved father’s violent action.

“I would like to thank Judge Kay for not sending me to jail,” Spiegelman told reporters as he left the hearing in a crowded courtroom in the San Francisco Hall of Justice. “I think it was a very courageous decision.”

Spiegelman’s lawyer, James P. Collins of San Francisco, also said that he was pleased by the penalty, under which Spiegelman will teach the basics of woodworking to disadvantaged children in Los Angeles County.

“That is exactly everything that we asked for,” he said. “I think we are fortunate we had a judge who was very compassionate and who knew that each case had to be judged on its merits.”

Last March, Spiegelman had pleaded guilty to assault with a deadly weapon, illegal use of a firearm and smuggling a firearm into a courtroom.

The charges stemmed from an April, 1986, assault in which Spiegelman stood up during a preliminary hearing in Judge William Stein’s courtroom, produced a handgun from his briefcase and fired several rounds point-blank at 40-year-old Daniel D. Morgan. Morgan, who was slightly wounded in the assault, was accused in the murder of Spiegelman’s 17-year-old daughter.

Morgan, a former mental patient, later pleaded guilty to first-degree murder for shooting and killing Sarah Spiegelman in an unprovoked attack four years ago. He was sentenced last January to 27 years to life in prison.

‘Due Process’

Deputy Atty. Gen. Charles Kirk, who prosecuted the case, said Spiegelman’s worst crime was “to interfere with the due process of the law.”

Before taking up a gun himself, Spiegelman was an outspoken advocate for victims of violent crime and was active in an organization called Justice for Homicide Victims. Once, however, an angry “open letter” he wrote to former California Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird was criticized, even by some members of his own group, as threatening.

“Mr. Spiegelman is very contrite for having put those other people in the courtroom--the judge and lawyers and bailiff and spectators--in fear for their lives,” Collins said.

However, Collins said Spiegelman has not shown any remorse for having shot his daughter’s murderer.

“I don’t know what his feelings are on that point, honestly,” Collins said.