SAN JOSE — An appellate court has overturned a South Bay judge’s double-jeopardy ruling and is allowing a third murder case against John Kevin Woodward to proceed in the 1992 killing of Laurie Houts, nearly 30 years after Woodward twice avoided conviction by deadlocked juries.
A three-judge panel from the Sixth District Court of Appeal overruled Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Shella Deen in a decision released Thursday. Deen had ruled last August that the 1996 dismissal of murder charges against Woodward — following two mistrials — meant another trial would violate his constitutional right against double jeopardy.
The appellate ruling, authored by Justice Allison Danner, stated a trial-court judge’s 1996 minute order that mentioned “insufficiency of the evidence” — and was heavily relied on by Deen and Woodward — was not definitive enough to indicate the judge meant to bar any future retrial.
“There is no clear indication in the record that the trial court viewed the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution and concluded that no rational trier of fact could have found the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt,” Danner wrote, describing the “substantial evidence standard” needed to prohibit another trial.
“We therefore cannot construe the … dismissal order as an acquittal,” she added. “We conclude the constitutional protection against double jeopardy does not bar the refiling of the murder charge against Woodward.”
The third murder charge was filed in 2022 after Mountain View police revisited the Houts case and commissioned a refreshed DNA analysis of a piece of rope that investigators had determined was the murder weapon.
Woodward’s attorney, Dan Barton, had made the double-jeopardy argument based in part on the 1996 minute order from Judge Lawrence Terry. After the second mistrial, Terry ordered that the murder charge be “dismissed in the furtherance of justice for insufficiency of the evidence,” language that Barton said made the order an acquittal prohibiting future prosecution of Woodward for Houts’ killing.
The Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office argued that the technical language of Terry’s order should have been contextualized with remarks he made in the same document, including: “There is simply a lack of evidence on which to convict the defendant. Without new evidence, the result of this case will be the same at each successive trial.”
Deen ultimately sided with Barton. Prosecutors then petitioned the Sixth District court, which issued a stay to prevent Deen’s ruling from being enforced pending its review.
In a statement to this news organization following the publication of the appellate opinion, the district attorney’s office said, “We are pleased with the decision and remain determined to bring John Woodward to justice for his murder of Laurie Houts.”
The appellate ruling orders Deen to vacate her dismissal of the murder charge, and Woodward has the chance to file his own appeal with the California Supreme Court. His attorney, Barton, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
Danner’s opinion was accompanied by a concurrent opinion by Justice Cynthia Lie, who wrote that Woodward might have prevailed had his case been evaluated under federal principles of double jeopardy. She urged the state Supreme Court to reexamine what she considers its “narrow definition” for what constitutes an acquittal.
Houts, 25, was killed on Sept. 5, 1992, while she drove home from her job at Adobe Systems in Mountain View. Investigators discovered signs of a struggle in her car, and her pocketbook was found unopened nearby.
Separate prosecutions of Woodward in 1995 and 1996 resulted in hung juries favoring acquittal by margins of 8-4 and 7-5, respectively. The first trial was notorious for prosecutors’ assertion that Woodward, who is gay, was jealous of Houts’ relationship with Woodward’s male roommate. The tactic was criticized as homophobic, and Judge Terry, who presided over the second trial, barred prosecutors from arguing that motive.
Woodward, who had since relocated to the Netherlands, was charged in July 2022 after authorities arrested him as he arrived in New York City for a vacation. He has been confined to home detention at a Modesto residence since he posted bail about a month after his arrest.
Thursday, Houts’ family lauded the news of Woodward’s case surviving the initial dismissal, saying they are “relieved by the recent decision of the appellate court to overturn the lower court’s ruling. It’s a big win in our ongoing fight for justice, but we know there’s still a long road ahead before this case sees a jury … Together, we’re sticking by each other’s side until we reach the end goal: Justice for Laurie.”