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Netscape.com: Los Angeles - Local News - Los Angeles Times - Article Page I of'3 Los Angeles powered by digitalcity.com Visit Another City Find local events, business. Event Guide Back to Loca! News Nightlife / Live Music. sponsored by: latimes.com. Local News Restaurant Guide Movie Guide Local news provlded by:. . Yellow Pages latimes.com. . Autos, Homes, Jobs.... : News & Sports New Trial, New Charge in Old Cases. : People & Personals By Henry Weinstein Visitor's Guide A man who has spent 22 years on California's death row got a mixed message from the criminal justice system Friday: A federal court awarded him a new trial on his 1979 murder conviction, but prosecutors revealed that DNA evidence links him to a. 1977 killing. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 3 to 0 that Rodney J. Aicala, now 59, a onetime photographer from Monterey Park, is entitled to a new trial because his constitutional rights were violated repeatedly at a 1986 trial in Orange.County, That trial was his second in the death of Robin Samsoe, a 12-year-old glrl last seen alive at the beach not far from her Huntington Beach home on June 20, 1979. The first conviction, in 1980, was also overturned. The appeals court ruled that the Judge in the 1986 trial wrongiy batred testimony that would have cast doubt on the prosecution's principat witness.. The reversal of the conviction brought angry objectlons from prosecutors and the * Looking for a new victim's family, home? click here. "We are incredibly disappointed," said Deputy Atty. Gen. Adrianne S. Denault, who More News From justice has not been served in this case." "I don't know if I'm ready for this," said Los Angeles Times Metro Networks bad. You're in a lot of shock.The second time, you know everything and you get Meanwhile, however, prosecutors have brought murder charges against Alcala in the Dec. 16, 1977, killng of Georgia Wixted, 27, at her home on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, allegedly as Alcala was committing a burglary. Wixted was beaten to death. State oficlals tested Alcala's DNA as part of a program of taking DNA samples from. people in prlson.There was a cold-case hit on a 1977 murder victim,Denault said. On June 5, the Los Angeles County district attorney's affice filed a complaint against. Alcala alleging that he murdered Wixted while he was engaged in the commission of two other felonies -- burglary and rape.. The complaint was lodged as a "special circumstances case, meaning that the district attorney's office may seek the death penalty, but no decision has been made. yet, sources said. In 1984, four years after Alcala's first trial, the Callfornia Supreme Court reversed the conviction.Prosecutors should not have been allowed to present evidence of his previous assaults on young women, the court sald. In 1968, Alcala attacked an 8-year-old giri, beating her with a pipe. He served a prison term for that crime and another for an attack on a 14-year-old girl. http://netscape.digitalcity.com/losangeles/news/article.adp?article-1322754&_dci_e_t--inc...6/29/2003