Court Denies Pleas for Leniency From 2 of Tay’s Killers

The 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana refused to grant leniency to two of the five youths convicted of killing Sunny Hills High School honors student Stuart A. Tay of Orange.

Defendants Kirn Young Kim and Mun Bong Kang, who were both teens at the time of the 1992 New Year’s Eve murder, had asked to serve their sentences in the California Youth Authority, rather than in state prison.

In the opinion, however, Justice David G. Sills wrote that the defendants, who were both sentenced in January, 1995, to 25 years to life in prison, deserved the more severe penalty because of the horrific nature of the crime.

Tay, 17, was bludgeoned with baseball bats and a sledgehammer by two other defendants, Robert Chien-nan Chan and Abraham Acosta. Chan also poured rubbing alcohol down Tay’s throat and taped his mouth shut. Tay was found buried in a shallow grave in the back yard of Acosta’s Buena Park home.

Kang, then 17, participated in the beating and Kim, then 16, waited outside the house in a car as a lookout while the murder took place. Kang, Kim, Chan and a fifth defendant, Charles Choe, were all from Fullerton.

Linda Tay, the victim’s mother, said Monday she agreed with the appellate court ruling.

“That was the best decision the court made,” she said. “In my opinion, they deserved more than they got,” she said of the defendants.

Linda Tay said she still believes that Orange County Superior Court Judge Kathleen O’Leary was too lenient with her son’s killers.

O’Leary struck a special circumstance allegation against Kang, which would have sent him to prison for life without the possibility of parole. O’Leary also sent Acosta, then 16, who also faced life without parole, to the California Youth Authority. He will be released when he is 25.

Chan, then 18, was sentenced in a separate trial to life in prison without possibility of parole. Choe, then 17, was tried as a juvenile and sentenced to the California Youth Authority.