Articles Posted in Murder

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An eighteen-year-old Santa Ana gang member, Eduardo Valencia, is being charged with the murder of Jaime Anica Olvera. Allegedly, Valencia tried to rob Olvera during the evening of July 23. Olvera was struggling to fight back, when a second gang member, Fabian Vargas Vega, pulled out a gun and shot Olvera in the upper body. Olvera died immediately at the scene. Vega was killed by police in a gun battle soon after the incident. Valencia fled the scene of the crime and was found hiding in a relative’s garage on Saturday. He is facing charges of murder, attempted robbery, felony street terrorism charges and a sentencing enhancement for allegedly carrying out the murder for the purpose of his street gang.

A criminal street gang is defined as any organization, association or group of 3 or more persons which has 1) continuity of purpose 2) seeks a group identity, and 3) has members who individually or collectively have engaged in criminal activity. Often times, when a gang member commits a crime for himself, the district attorney will want to say he committed the crime for the benefit of a street gang and slap on additional charges and penalties. A good attorney would try and prove that the defendant did not commit the crime in furtherance of the gang and therefore the gang enhancements should be dropped. There are gangs in Irvine, Garden Grove, Westminster and almost every other city in Orange County. If you are charged with gang crimes, the state of California will be very tough on you and you will need an experienced gang attorney on your side.

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Police are looking for Erin Brooks and Brian Hanson who police think are white supremacists who beat up a Latino man last month. Michael Powell and Bret Hicks are currently in custody for the same incident. Allegedly, all four suspects were circling a Latino neighborhood looking for someone “non-white” to assault. They saw a man come out of the neighborhood so they yelled racial slurs at him, stabbed him three times, kicked him and punched him. Neighbors from the area jumped into the fight and separated the suspects from the victim. They were all arrested for assault with a deadly weapon and Brooks and Hanson were released on bail. Now they are being charged with attempted murder plus hate crime enhancements and police can no longer find Brooks and Hanson. All of the suspects have criminal backgrounds and white supremacy tattoos.

Hate crimes occur when perpetrators attack a member of a certain group because of their race, religion, sexual identity, gender, disability, age, etc. If a crime is carried out for hate purposes, it will be given a sentencing enhancement because it is such a serious crime that can provoke retaliatory crimes, inflict emotional harm and incite community unrest. Regardless of what city you live in, whether it is Fountain Valley, Fullerton or Newport Beach, hate crimes are serious crimes and if you are charged with one, you need an experienced criminal defense attorney.

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In 1992, Shaun Kareem Burney, a 19-year-old from Tustin placed a gun against the skull of Joseph Andrew Kondrath, a 23-year-old Anaheim college student. He robbed him of $1 and then put him in the trunk of a stolen car. A few minutes later, Burney opened the trunk and fired two shots into Kondrath’s head, killing him. During the trial, prosecutors argued that Kondrath was killed so he would not be a witness to the carjacking and robbery. In 1994, Burney was charged with murder and sentenced to death. His co-defendants were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Burney appealed his conviction and sentence and on Thursday of this week, the Supreme Court of California affirmed his conviction and his sentence.

The death penalty is a sentence given only to murders that possess special circumstances besides just a murder. This case involved a carjacking, a robbery and a murder. Those three crimes make it a special circumstances case that is eligible for capital punishment. Capital punishment is a controversial form of punishment. Proponents of the death penalty claim that it is useful for retribution, general deterrence and incapacitation. Opponents of the death penalty claim that it is too strict of a penalty and wrongfully accused people can be wrongfully executed. Regardless if you live in Irvine, Fullerton or Newport Beach, if you are charged with capital murder, you will need an experienced criminal defense attorney.

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A 17-year-old teenager named Lily Burk was found dead in her car in Los Angeles last week. It looked as if she had died from blunt force trauma to the head. Earlier in the day, Burk had gone to Southwestern Law School to pick up some papers for her mother who was a teacher there. On her way home, she called both of her parents separately to ask them how to use her ATM card. They had no idea that she was asking because she was being robbed. Allegedly, Mr. Charlie Samuel, a transient with a history of drug and violent crimes, tried to rob Burk. A struggle ensued inside the car and hours later, Burk’s dead body was found inside her black Volvo. Charlie Samuel had been arrested hours before the body had been found for other crimes. He is now being held without bail for the crime of murder.

Burk was an active student at her high school. She was supposed to star in a play at her school and wanted to become a writer in the future.

This is an unfortunate event and Mr. Samuel will need an experienced criminal defense attorney, whether this happened in Los Angeles, Irvine, or Anaheim. The attorney will need to investigate what Mr. Samuel was doing that day, what events occurred, if he in fact robbed Ms. Burk and how she died. A good defense attorney does not concede that his client did the crime. Instead, they look at all available evidence and defenses and craft well researched arguments to adequately defend their client and ensure them a fair trial.

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Two juveniles, one 17 and one 13, were shot on a street corner after a green car pulled up to where the boys were standing, exchanged words with them, and then opened fire.

The boys were wounded, but survived. The shooters fled the scene. This sounds like a classic gang “hit-up”. It goes something like this: Car pulls up in “enemy” territory, window rolls down.

SHOOTER: “Where you from?”
VICTIM: “I ain’t from anywhere”
SHOOTER: “F___ YOU!” (shout name of own gang-fire weapon-drive off)

Very likely then, this is a case of a young gangster earning his stripes for his gang. A drive-by comes in many forms. The police and the DA treat most people charged with gang crimes as all the same. That is a mistake. Many of the people involved with gangs know each other from the neighborhood where they grew up. Many join the gang because to avoid doing so means getting beaten up repeatedly, or worse.

Gang police officers spend a lot of time making contact with kids in tough neighborhoods. They document their contacts through “F.I.”, or field interview, cards, recording date and time of contact, nature of the contact and any statements or admissions by the suspected gang member. After a few contacts the alleged member will get “stepped”, meaning the police will advise him that in their opinion he is a gang member and could be charged with a variety of crimes that are gang-related, in the future. These FI cards and STEP notices are used by the DA in their prosecution of suspected gang members.

An experienced Orange County criminal defense attorney who handles gang cases will look to distinguish his client from the gang and look to see if law enforcement had already decided that the suspect was a gang member even before the incident, thus carrying a bias against that person.

In Orange County, whether in Fullerton, Westminster, Garden Grove, Santa Ana or Tustin, a conviction for conduct such as this can sometimes carry a life term in prison.

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Over twenty years after the strangulation of an Orange County woman by her alarm clock cord, Wendell Lemond was convicted of murder. On August 5, 1985, Lemond went into the then 20-year-old, Catherine Tameny’s apartment and strangled her and tied her two year old son up with electrical tape. The motive was unclear but authorities think there might have been a sexual assault or rape before the killing. The suspect was unknown at the time, but through DNA evidence, Lemond was found to be the suspect and was arrested in July 2007. Lemond likely faces 25 years for the murder he committed.

DNA evidence has just recently began appearing in courtrooms. Over the last 20 years, the forensic science field has grown tremendously and DNA evidence has been a huge tool used to solve unsolved murder cases. It is a testament to the importance of the field that DNA collected from the body of the victim 24 years ago was able to be tested and the suspect was found, charged and convicted.

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Orange County jurors listening to a murder for hire plot will decide whether 58 year old Sandra Jessee conspired with her son to kill her husband, who was ailing with cancer.

She allegedly gave the hitman $5,000.00 in a Placentia parking lot a year earlier with a total payment of $50,000.00. The hitman has since plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter and has cooperated with prosecutors.

It will be interesting to note whether and how the alleged hitman testified at trial. If his credibility was called into question, jurors would have to decide what weight to give his version of events and might even toss out whatever version he offered. If they did that, it would be devastating to the prosecution. If they believed him, the defense would have a hard time overcoming that version of events.

A skilled defense attorney doesn’t wait for the facts to come to him. He develops them out of the discovery he’s given, the investigation he does, and the arguments he crafts from all his preparation.

An experienced Orange County criminal lawyer knows that most trials don’t come out the way the prosecution intends them. Witnesses fold up like a lawn chair on the stand, or they take a powder and never show up at all. We’ll see what the jury says when they return a verdict.

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Recently I wrote about Supermarket mogul George Torres trial. (See post here). I was suprised to see this story in The L.A. Times that reported that Torres was set free in his case after prosecutors failed to turn over recordings with possible exculpatory information regarding an informant who testified for the prosecution at trial. Tuesday, the Judge granted the Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss based on a constitutional violation—Torres claimed that he was unable to assert his constitutional right to confront his accusers when the government didn’t divulge that exculpatory information existed.

Torres still faces sentencing on lesser convictions but this ruling appears to significantly limit his exposure to prison time. Torres was facing murder and racketeering charges.

U.S. v. Brady is the Supreme Court case that controls this sort of prosecutorial misconduct. In Brady, the prosecution had withheld from a criminal defendant a confession by a co-defendant in his murder trial. The defendant challenged his conviction, arguing the prosecution jeopardized his Due Process rights. The Supreme Court found that withholding evidence violates due process “where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment” and as a result of the ruling, prosecutors are required to affirmatively notify defendants and their attorneys whenever a law enforcement official involved in their case have a record for knowingly lying in an official capacity.

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Phil Spector’s six years in Los Angeles County’s justice system, that started with an arrest for shooting a actress Lana Clarkson in 2003 will conclude Friday morning when he is sentenced to prison for murder. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler, who presided over the music producer’s two trials, has little discretion in punishing Spector, for the shooting– a death that jurors decided last month was second-degree murder.

The conviction carries a mandatory 15 years to life in prison, so the judge’s only choice will be whether to add on three, four or 10 more years to the minimum sentence for the use of a firearm. The music producer also could get three, four or 10 additional years for using a firearm in the killing that occurred at his Alhambra mansion in 2003.

Spector has been in jail since his April 13 conviction and has vowed to appeal his conviction. This appeal is likely to raise issues regarding the trial admissibility of testimony from five women who said Spector menaced them with guns in a manner that prosecutors said were similar to the circumstances of Clarkson’s death in the foyer of his Alhambra mansion—sometimes called “prior bad act” evidence.

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Thursday’s gang bust in Hawaiian Gardens involving 1400 local, state and federal agents resulted in 147 arrests for alleged racially-motivated crimes against African Americans. The L.A. Times is reporting that Operation Knock Out targeted associates of the Varrio Hawaiian Gardens gang (VHG) who were so pervasive in that community that one in 15 people living in the square-mile city just north of Long Beach has ties to it.

In its 193-page indictment outlining the racketeering case, federal authorities accuse the south Los Angeles County street gang of a litany of crimes, including the murder of a sheriff’s deputy and racially motivated attacks designed to drive African Americans from their town. The indictments included charges for murder, attempted murder, drug trafficking, weapons trafficking, extortion, kidnapping and witness intimidation. The gang members, allegedly boasted about being racist, referring to themselves as “the Hate Gang.” The document also details more than a dozen incidents where African Americans were allegedly beaten, shot at or harassed because of their race.

Authorities say that the gang was formed in the 1950s or early ’60s and has more than 1,000 members today–spanning several generations, with many connections to the Mexican Mafia.

In cases as large as this, it is expected that many of the smaller gang players will flip –or decide to testify for the prosecution–in order to implicate larger players and score a better plea bargain for themselves.

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