OCEANSIDE: State Supreme Court dismisses cold case

By Teri Figueroa - Staff Writer | Thursday, July 24, 2008 5:12 PM PDT ∞

The state's highest court on Wednesday dismissed the case brought against a man accused in the brutal slayings of his parents in their Oceanside home on Easter Sunday 28 years ago.

The move ends the murder case prosecutors were trying to bring against David Andrew Boysen, whose parents Robert Boysen, 56, and Elsie Boysen, 51, were found beaten and shot to death on April 7, 1980, in their Avocado Road home.

"We are very pleased with this result," Boysen's attorney Steven Levine said Wednesday. "It is now finished, over, done, kaput."

In 1982, two years after the slayings, Oceanside police brought their suspicions about Boysen to prosecutors, who declined to file charges against him.

But in 2004, after the district attorney's office created a new unit to look into old, unsolved homicides, Boysen, who was living in Fallbrook, was charged with murder.

Superior Court Judge Joan Weber dismissed the case, finding that Boysen's due process rights would be violated by the delay, and that he could not fairly defend himself. She noted that prosecutors had no new evidence, including DNA linking the son to the murder, and that alibi witnesses had died.

The 4th District Court of Appeals upheld Weber's decision. Prosecutors asked the California Supreme Court to review it, in light of legal questions regarding due process.

The high court agreed to review the case, but then dismissed it Wednesday, citing decisions it recently made in another cold case that had raised at least one similar issue regarding delayed charges and due process. But that other case, which was unrelated to Boysen's case, did not answer all the legal questions raised in Boysen's case.

"We're disappointed," Deputy District Attorney Jim Atkins said of the dismissal of the case. "We were hoping that the issues that we raised would be decided upon by the Supreme Court."

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Pre-Registration Comments[-]Go to Top

Who was the detective wrote on Jul 24, 2008 9:40 PM:I would bet money this is the case that Jim Wood botched and Sean Murry brought to light to the now mayor's dismay. More lawsuits to follow.

Wrong person botched it wrote on Jul 24, 2008 10:00 PM:It wasn't Jim Wood who botched the case....

Overzealous DA wrote on Jul 24, 2008 11:44 PM:26 years later, the DA's office gets some money and a new chief and they force the filing of charges with no new evidence. If there was no evidence against Boysen in 1982, why would they think for a second that there was a case in 2008? Doesn't make sense. It sure wasn't Oceanside cops that made the mistake. And last I checked, people are still presumed innocent. I've watched "Cold Case" on TV and the show is about finding,evidence with new science and technology, like DNA, after "the trail has gone cold." Here, there was no new evidence. No evidence, no case. Period.

Well maybe... wrote on Jul 25, 2008 7:37 AM:Well maybe if Lieutenant Murray (emphasis on Lieutenant) would have let one of his then current detectives do their job, the case would have had a different outcome. Arrogance has no place in police work...Well maybe in the promotional process it does.

OK then if..... wrote on Jul 25, 2008 9:08 AM:If was not this case that former Police Officer, now Mayor, Jim Wood botched which one was it? Because I know Wood was mad as a hornet over Lt. Murray’s new findings on one of his cases.

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