Opinion ID: 4693763
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Summary of Evidence Presented

Text: On August 7, 2010, a Saturday evening, Ruben Martinez was killed in his SUV in front of his girlfriend’s house on a short block of Beach Street between Benicia Road and Central Avenue in Vallejo, California. At about 10:00 p.m., Martinez had driven his girlfriend Jessica Blanco home so she could use the bathroom, check movie times, and get her jacket. Just before Martinez turned left onto Beach Street from Benicia Road, a white car ahead of them made a U-turn and went back past them the other way on Benicia Road. Blanco later testified at trial that she had not been able to see anyone in the car and that she could not identify the make or model of the car. When they arrived at her house, Blanco went inside while Martinez stayed in his SUV with the motor still running. Martinez had washed the SUV earlier in the day. Blanco testified at trial that a few minutes after walking into the house, she heard a loud popping noise and the revving of an engine. She “heard a screeching noise, tires peeling, gravel.” FORD V. PEERY 7 Blanco went outside and saw that Martinez’s SUV had crashed into a neighbor’s garage down the street. A few minutes before Martinez was shot, Bethel Johnson (“Johnson”) and two of her children arrived at their house across the street from Blanco’s house. When Johnson got out of her car, she saw Martinez sitting in his SUV with the motor running and headlights on, and with the driver’s side window rolled up. Johnson testified that she could see through the tinted window that Martinez was looking at his lighted cell phone. She testified that there was a party on Beach Street at a black motorcycle club about half a block away on the other side of Benicia Road. There was a party at the club “almost every Saturday that month.” Johnson testified that three young black men were walking up Beach Street toward the party. Two of them were “maybe 16, 17, 18 years old,” and the other was “much older,” “19, 21. Between there.” Johnson testified that the older man was “somewhere” between 5'6 and 5'9, that he was wearing a dark hooded sweatshirt, and that he had dreads. Johnson’s daughter, Tenley Johnson (“Tenley”), got out of the back seat on the passenger side with the family Rottweiler on a leash. Johnson testified that the dog charged the man she had described as older. She called to Tenley, “Control your dog.” Johnson testified that the man “said something like, ‘Hi girly,’ and then kind of like turned around away from the dog” and walked in the opposite direction toward Central Avenue, away from the party. She testified that she saw no weapons, and that the man said nothing threatening to Tenley. Between two and three minutes after getting into her house, Johnson heard what sounded like a shot and broken glass. Johnson went outside to check on her 8 FORD V. PEERY car. She found her own car intact and saw no one on the street. Tenley testified that she, too, had seen Martinez’s cell phone light through the window of the SUV. She testified that when she got out of the car, she saw three young black men walking from Central Avenue toward the party on Benicia Road. She described them to a police officer that night as “teenagers.” Tenley said her dog “started barking and . . . pulling me.” The dog pulled her toward a man with “short hair.” She said, “I couldn’t really see the face. It was dark.” She testified that the man was “skinny.” Tenley is 5'3. She described the man as taller than she was and shorter than a 6'0 police officer who interviewed her. Tenley testified that the man was wearing a blue jacket with one or more white stripes “on the sleeves.” She said it was “like a track jacket” and that it did not cover his head. One of the other men had dreads. She did not see any of the men’s faces. When later shown six photographs, including a photograph of Ford, Tenley did not identify Ford as one of the three “teenagers” she had seen that night. Another neighbor, Moises Cervantes, was walking out of his house on Beach Street. His house was between Blanco’s house and Central Avenue. Cervantes heard a “pop” and saw Martinez’s SUV coming toward him. After the SUV crashed, Cervantes looked up and down the street and saw no one. Martinez was killed with a single shot. His foot was pressed on the gas pedal, causing the SUV to accelerate down the street until it crashed into the neighbor’s garage. The engine continued to run, and the rear wheels to spin, even after the SUV came to a stop. Martinez’s cell phone was found on the floorboard of the front passenger seat. The FORD V. PEERY 9 driver’s side window was intact and about “a quarter of the way down.” The other windows on the driver’s side were closed and intact. A photograph introduced into evidence shows two rear side windows on the passenger side that were shattered. At least one of the windows had been broken by first responders. Five days later, on August 12, two Vallejo detectives lawfully stopped Keith Ford. Ford was twenty-three years old. He is black, is 5'8 tall, and weighs 165 pounds. At the time of the stop, he had short hair. He was driving a white Oldsmobile sedan. The detectives found Ford’s cell phone inside his car and discovered six additional cell phones in the center console. Ford was read his Miranda rights. One of the detectives, Les Bottomley, testified that Ford said that he had “bought [the cell phones] stolen off the street.” Later in the same interview, however, Ford told Bottomley he did not know whether they had been stolen. Ford told Bottomley that he was right-handed. Bottomley asked Ford where he had been on the night of August 7. Ford answered that he “was at his mother’s home and at that time would have been in bed.” Bottomley testified that Ford’s mother’s house is about three and half miles from Blanco’s neighborhood. Bottomley did not ask Ford about Martinez’s murder. When Ford was stopped, he had a jacket in his car. Detective Bottomley testified that he later showed the jacket to Tenley. Tenley told him that it was not the jacket she had seen on the young man with the short hair on August 7. Ford was arrested on September 26 and charged with having a concealed firearm in his vehicle on that date. It was 10 FORD V. PEERY stipulated to the jury that the firearm was unrelated to Martinez’s murder. Ford was held on the charge in the Solano County Jail until December 14. On December 13, Detective Bottomley interviewed Ford again. He asked Ford if he knew Martinez. Bottomley testified that Ford said “he did not think he did.” Ford repeated that he had been at his mother’s house on the night of August 7 and had spent the night there. Bottomley told Ford that his palm print had been found on Martinez’s SUV. Ford replied, “That don’t mean nothing. That just mean I came in contact with the vehicle at one time or another.” While Ford was in jail on the firearm charge, he spoke to his girlfriend on the telephone. The call was recorded. Ford said: [L]uckily I ain’t in here for murder, that’s all I keep thinking about . . . oh well I wish it didn’t have to happen . . . I just [wish] I was at home . . . I know I gotta deal with my (unintelligible) it’s too late for all that . . . to be wishing I was at home . . . See I’m disappointed in myself. But [expletive] that’s what happens when you carry a gun. Ain’t nothin good gonna come of it. And I know this and [expletive] still happen, cause I tell other people the only thing you gonna get out of a gun is you gonna throw down with it or you gonna shoot somebody with it. And I tell everybody that and look at my [expletive]. A recording of the call was played for the jury. FORD V. PEERY 11 Several months after the murder, the following message appeared on Ford’s Facebook page, directed at someone who had accused Ford of shooting him: I heard through the grapevine you was looking for the guy. Let me know something. And since you think I popped you, check this out. First off, I don’t [expletive] with the Vistas. Second off, I am too good of a shooter to hit a [expletive] that many times and not knock they [expletive] down. Last, when you getting shot, I was on Fifth buying some syrup off Jigs. Plus, I don’t even [expletive] with [expletive], so ain’t nobody talked to me since I got out of jail last. Real killers move in silence. And would I brag on a job I didn’t even complete? [Expletive] knocking [expletive] down. I don’t need credit for an attempt, so take that how you want to. The message was read to the jury. The prosecution presented testimony from four fingerprint analysts about a partial latent left palm print found on Martinez’s SUV. Niki Zamora of the San Mateo County Forensics Laboratory testified that she examined the SUV on August 11. She discovered the latent print on the outside of the driver’s door, just below the window. The exterior of the vehicle was “rather dirty,” with dirt and a sticky white substance on the door where she found the print. Fire extinguishers had been used on the SUV after the crash. Zamora testified that she cleaned off only some of the “dirt and debris” before “dusting” and taking her “first lift” of the print. She did not indicate on the “fingerprint card” that the 12 FORD V. PEERY area from which the print was lifted “had debris on it.” Zamora was not “certified as a crime scene processor” because she “hadn’t had enough experience yet.” Frankie Franck, a certified latent print examiner, matched Zamora’s “first lift” to Ford’s palm print. Franck compared the latent print to “several” electronically taken prints (“Live Scan prints”) that he had been given, including one from Ford taken in October 2009 in Butte County, California. Franck testified that the latent print obtained by Zamora “was not of the best quality,” and that it covered “probably 30 percent” of the total palm. Despite the quality of the latent print, and despite the fact that it was only a partial print, Franck testified that he was certain of the match—“[a]s certain as I am sitting here.” Zamora then confirmed Franck’s match. She conceded that she had not followed the lab’s normal protocol, which required that a confirming print analyst “not, in any way, [be] associated with the work that . . . had [been] done.” Zamora was, of course, directly associated with that work, for she had lifted the latent print from the SUV. Zamora was not certified as a latent print examiner. She had taken the certification test and was awaiting the result. Darrell Klasey, a certified latent print examiner at the Solano County Sheriff’s Office, took a rolled ink print of Ford’s hands in May 2011. Klasey compared the ink print of Ford’s left palm to the Live Scan print that Franck had been given. Klasey concluded that the ink print and the Live Scan print were from the same person. Cross-examination revealed Klasey’s questionable performance at a previous agency. FORD V. PEERY 13 Lynne Lazzari, a latent fingerprint analyst at the Solano County Sheriff’s Office, confirmed Klasey’s conclusion. Her analysis was based only on the two prints that Klasey had given her (Ford’s ink print and the Live Scan print analyzed by Franck), and she knew that Klasey had already concluded that they matched. Lazzari testified, “I did my own independent study and came up with why it was the same person.” She testified that she “more or less” followed a standard method for comparing prints. When questioned about the standard method, which requires examining the unknown print before the known print, she responded that she compared the prints side by side: “Well, that’s why I said ‘more or less.’ I do it my way.” When asked whether her method had “ever been tested or validated for accuracy,” she responded, “No.” Lazzari had never taken the test to be certified as a latent print examiner. There was also testimony about the condition of Martinez’s SUV after it crashed into the garage. As noted above, Zamora had examined the SUV on August 11, 2010. She testified that the driver’s side window was intact and was “partially down.” Detective Bottomley, who had been at the crime scene on the night of the murder, had earlier testified that the driver’s side window was intact and was “about a quarter of the way down.” According to the prosecution’s crime scene reconstructionist, the driver’s side window was 1.2 feet open, and a 5'8 individual could stand by the SUV and reach through the window without contortion. The prosecutor asked whether there was a “[l]arge enough space to put a hand in.” Bottomley had answered, “Absolutely.” Zamora testified that the other driver’s side windows were intact but that the “two rear passenger side windows” were “shattered,” with “[n]o glass there.” Photographs of the SUV, supporting Zamora’s testimony, were shown to the jury. 14 FORD V. PEERY Zamora testified that there were no bullet holes “either inside . . . or outside” the SUV. Finally, Susan Hogan, M.D., a forensic pathologist, testified about the bullet wound and the manner of shooting. She testified that Martinez was killed by a single shot to the back left side of his head. The bullet entered about an inch and a half from the top of his head and two inches left from the posterior (back) midline. It traveled downward, forward, and to the right, coming to rest in the soft tissue of the right side of the neck. Dr. Hogan testified that death was “[v]irtually instantaneous.” She testified that there was no soot or “stippling” at or near the entry point, which meant that the shot was fired from “at least three feet away.” Defense counsel presented evidence that other than a brief conversation on the night of the murder, law enforcement did not identify or contact anyone at the motorcycle party down the street. Law enforcement collected license plate numbers of all of the vehicles on the street, but did not follow up on any of them. Law enforcement never showed Blanco a picture of Ford’s white Oldsmobile to determine whether it was the car she had seen on the night of the murder. No one reviewed the contents of the stolen cell phones recovered from Ford’s car. Though one witness reported hearing multiple shots, the only bullet found was the one that killed Martinez. No gun or shell casings were ever found. There was gunshot residue on the inside of the driver’s side door, but there was no residue on the window seal of the door or on Martinez’s clothes. The only DNA found at the scene belonged to Martinez. FORD V. PEERY 15