Edition: U.S. / Global

As Murder Cases Drag On, the Mourning Never Ends

Published: March 2, 1989

James O'Brien often drives the twisting stretch of country road where his daughter was kidnapped by a murderer. Here, he points out, her car was forced off the pavement. There, he says, the killer's car left a tire track.

Since he first stood on this spot with dozens of police officers in December 1982, Mr. O'Brien says, his family has watched its world collapse into itself. For six years the survivors of 25-year-old Deirdre O'Brien have waited through trials, appeals and lawyers' motions, and yet her convicted killer, James J. Koedatich, sits on New Jersey's death row with years of appeals ahead.

Mr. O'Brien says his family, like thousands of other survivors of murder victims around the United States, has endured a cruel and unusual punishment, waiting for the end of a murder case so that its members may once again begin to live.

''Usually, when you have a death in the family, you have the death, you have the mourning, and slowly but surely you get on with your lives,'' said Mr. O'Brien, 58, who operates a small water-purification business in Livingston. ''But as long as this goes on there is no end to the mourning, no time to put what happened behind.''

''There is no vengeance in this,'' he said. ''It's just we have been going on with this for six years with no end in sight, and it is not fair, either for him or for us.'' Survivors to Testify

Mr. O'Brien and several other survivors of murder victims are scheduled to testify at a legislative hearing Thursday in Trenton on the delays and years of litigation involved in capital-offense cases in New Jersey. Politicians in New Jersey, Florida, Oklahoma, Missouri and other states, as well as the Chief Justice of the United States, William H. Rehnquist, have recently called for measures to shorten an appeals process that often takes more than a decade.

Proponents of the death penalty argue that opponents of capital punishment are undermining justice with the long battles they wage in state and Federal courts.

But vicitms-rights advocates say their concern is less whether the death penalty is carried out than that the process not drag on for so many years. Medical research, they say, indicates that the process takes a heavy psychological toll on family members.

John Stein, deputy director of the National Organization for Victim Assistance in Washington, said: ''For so many survivors of homicides, you find that getting on with the grief work, the enormously difficult psychological process, is impossible until there is a resolution of the legal aspects of the case. It leads us to say either find a way to execute these people or get rid of the death penalty altogether.''

There are more than 2,100 inmates on death rows across the country, while there have been 2 to 25 executions a year since capital punishment was reinstituted in 1976. Awakened by the Police

Since New Jersey restored its death penalty in 1982, 29 people have been sentenced to death by lethal injection, but none have been executed. Legal experts believe it is unlikely that any execution will take place until the mid-1990's.

For the O'Brien family, the process began early on Dec. 5, 1982, when Mr. O'Brien and his wife were awakened by a telephone call from the police. They and their four children, by then young adults, had lived a pleasant if uneventful life in Mendham Township.

The police said they had found what they believed was their daughter's car abandoned on a road nearby. Deirdre, who lived at home after graduating from college and worked as a waitress at a nearby restaurant, had been visiting friends the night before and was expected home late.

Mr. O'Brien accompanied the police to identify the car found abandoned on Washington Valley Road, a winding, hilly two-lane country road that bisects woodlands and meadows. An hour later he stood frozen as the scene turned surreal. Dozens of police officers combed the area, which was floodlit as bright as day. Dew dripped from trees and dogs sniffed the ground for a scent they could not find. Stabbed in the Chest

''There was no reality anymore,'' Mr. O'Brien said. ''It doesn't make sense. Events take over and you are controlled by events.''

Later that morning the police and the family's priest came to the O'Brien home to say that Dierdre was dead. She had been forced off the road by another car and was taken by a man wielding a knife to a rest stop on Interstate 80, they said. Although she had been stabbed several times in the chest, she managed to stumble 100 feet to the cab of a trailer truck. She woke the driver and gave him a description of her assailant before she died Less than two weeks earlier, an 18-year-old high school cheerleader from Parsippany-Troy Hills had been kidnapped and stabbed to death with a hunting knife. In January, the police arrested Mr. Koedatich, a 34-year-old paroled murderer from Morristown, and charged him with both killings.

With news of the O'Brien murder, lines of cars began to stop in front of the house to gaze, and people often became strained and uncomfortable in the family's presence. Mrs. O'Brien found that neighbors avoided her at local stores, unsure of what to say.

''I can clear out an aisle at Foodtown faster than somebody yellling fire,'' Mrs. O'Brien told her husband. Six Trial Dates Set In the following 18 months six trial dates were set and canceled and Mr. Koedatich changed his defense lawyers three times. Despite Mr. Koedatich's conviction and death sentence in October 1984 for the killing of the cheerleader, Amie Hoffman, and Mr. Koedatich's plea that he be executed to save his own family years of pain, he went on trial for Miss O'Brien's killing in February 1985.

The O'Brien family sat through months of jury selection and weeks of testimony. On May 1, 1985, Mr. Koedatich was found guilty. The next day the family stayed in the courtroom for hours as the jurors - at times screaming behind closed doors - tried to decide on the death penalty. They voted against it and Mr. Koedatich was sentenced to life in prison.

''After two and a half years of waiting, you figure, after this, you can go back to a normal life,'' Mr. O'Brien said. ''Nothing could be further from the truth.''

The New Jersey Supreme Court sent the death penalty in the Hoffman case back for retrial. Legal experts believe it will be years before the case has finished the appeals process. Execution Not the Goal

In the meantime, Mr. O'Brien said he and his wife see Mr. Koedatich on television and in newspapers every time there is a development in the case. Two of their children have moved out of the state, in part to escape the recurrent publicity.

Mr. O'Brien said he has devoted himself to work with victims-rights groups. He has met other families of murder victims who have suffered from alcoholism, depression, drug use, divorce and physical illnesses.

Mr. O'Brien said the family's goal is not the execution of Mr. Koedatich, although family members believe he should die. The goal is the end of the legal process, so that their daughter's murder can be put in the past.

''Will I feel joy if James Koedatich is put to death?'' he said. ''No. I am sure the next day I will feel very hollow. I will not become an animal. We just feel that due process should take place.''

photo of James O'Brien (NYT/Jim Wilson) (pg. B4)