Opinion ID: 2567623
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 26

Heading: Sanchez's information and arrangement

Text: The referee found that Saucedo confessed to Sanchez that he had stabbed a Black drug dealer multiple times in the face and upper torso over a bad drug transaction. Saucedo told Sanchez he had used his own knife and had thrown it onto a riverbank. Saucedo took full credit for stabbing Hosey and never said petitioner had participated. In April 1981, Sanchez received $150 through the witness protection program. In June 1981, then Deputy District Attorney Ito applied for additional funds, supplying the declaration of a deputy sheriff that stated: I have been advised by Deputy District Attorney Lance A. Ito of the Hardcore Gang Division that Marvin Sanchez is a necessary and material witness in the within case because defendant Joe Saucedo related to Marvin Sanchez the manner in which Penal Code section 187 victim Hosey was stabbed to death with such unusual particularity as to indicate that the source of the information was intimately involved in the commission of the crime. The court authorized the requested sum of $650. Neither Saucedo's inculpatory statement to Sanchez nor the fact that Sanchez received witness protection funds was disclosed to petitioner. The referee found that disclosure of Sanchez's information and the prosecution's arrangements with him would have led to useful defense evidence. The referee also found that the prosecution had dismissed pending charges against Sanchez when he agreed to testify against Saucedo and that he was released and given money to relocate. Had this information been disclosed, the referee concluded, the defense would have used it to argue that the prosecution did not have a good faith belief that Saucedo was truthfully describing petitioner's involvement in the Hosey killing.