Opinion ID: 822903
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Evidence Supporting Acquittal or Conviction

Text: We also consider the evidence of guilt and innocence presented at trial. The prosecution maintained throughout that Gongora and Orosco had approached Sierra and that Gongora was the shooter. This theory relied on the trial testimony of two of Gongora’s co-conspirators, Juan Vargas and James Luedtke, both of whom had credibility issues. The evidence of guilt in this case was not overwhelming, and there was substantial evidence supporting acquittal. First, the jury had reason to question Vargas’s and Luedtke’s testimony that Gongora was the shooter. According to Vargas’s initial, written and sworn confession (prior to any plea agreement), Carlos Almanza and James Luedtke approached Sierra and Almanza was the shooter. The statement of Vargas’s wife, given to a detective, was consistent with the facts in that first confession. It was only after Vargas was re-interviewed by Detective Ortega (when he was seeking a plea bargain) that Vargas orally contradicted his initial written statement to claim that Gongora and Orosco exited the van to approach Sierra. Dylan Griffith, with whom Luedtke had lived at the time of the offense, testified that when he met up with Luedtke and the others in Vargas’s van after the shooting, Albert Orosco had a .38 in his waistband and was bragging about having killed a man, saying he took “his dreams” (the words that Luedtke 43 Richardson v. Marsh, 481 U.S. 200, 207 (1987) (quoting Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 135–36 (1968)) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Donnelly v. DeChristoforo, 416 U.S. 637, 644 (1974) (acknowledging that “some occurrences at trial may be too clearly prejudicial for such a curative instruction to mitigate their effect”). 20 No. 07-70031 attributed to Gongora). In addition, Griffith testified that Luedtke had originally asked Griffith whether he should tell police that Orosco did it, and when Griffith said Luedtke should tell the truth about whatever happened, Luedtke said he was not “going down” for it. Moreover, while Vargas replaced Almanza and Luedtke with Gongora and Orosco in his second statement to police, he did not indicate in that statement that he had actually seen Gongora shoot Sierra. Indeed, it would have been difficult for Vargas or Luedtke to have actually seen the shooting, given their positions in the van and the van’s location at the time. In addition, the diagram drawn by one of the detectives based on his interview of Vargas shows that Gongora — according to Vargas — would have been walking on the right of Sierra. Luedtke, too, placed Gongora on the right. But Sonia Ramos, the State’s lead-off witness and the only independent eyewitness in the case, stated that the man walking on the left of Sierra shot him; her testimony was consistent with forensic evidence that showed a bullet had hit the back, left side of Sierra’s head. Vargas’s second statement to police had put Orosco on the left. The State offered no explanation of this significant difficulty, which was created by its own witnesses on direct examination. Second, even taking into account the alternative theory offered to the jury — that Orosco and Gongora entered into a conspiracy to rob Sierra and that Orosco shot Sierra in furtherance of that conspiracy — the evidence against Gongora was far from overwhelming, for at least two reasons. First, the alternative theory not only required the jury to find that Gongora and Orosco entered into a conspiracy to rob Sierra and that Orosco shot Sierra in furtherance of the conspiracy, but also that the shooting “should have been anticipated” by Gongora. Yet the State presented no direct evidence that Gongora should have anticipated a shooting of Sierra by Orosco and made no 21 No. 07-70031 effort to argue that point in its closing arguments.44 Second, there was evidence indicating that neither Gongora nor Orosco shot Sierra. Ramiro Enriquez, who had no stake in the case, testified that he was a friend of Almanza in prison and that Almanza had said he did the shooting. That testimony largely aligned with Vargas’s original sworn statement in which he had said that Almanza and Luedtke had approached Sierra and that Almanza was the shooter. The tension between Vargas’s testimony that he saw Gongora shoot Sierra and Vargas’s indication that Gongora was on Sierra’s right not only cast doubt on Vargas’s claim that Gongora was the shooter, but also more generally on the credibility of Vargas’s revised account of what occurred. Gongora’s written statement provided to detectives asserted that he was not the shooter; it made no mention of Orosco; and, contrary to the CCA’s summary of the evidence, it did not indicate that Gongora approached Sierra. Finally, the notes sent out by the jury during deliberations suggest that the prosecutor’s comments reflected a focus on which of the PLM members in the van had testified and which had not. One note requested Vargas’s first statement to the detectives and another asked about Vargas’s response to a 44 The dissent insists that “the evidence is overwhelming that, at the very last, Gongora was guilty as a party to capital murder,” pointing to Gongora’s written statement, in which Gongora admitted that he and others exited the van to “get a little money [from Sierra] and go about our business.” But in its focus on the evidence of Gongora’s participation in the conspiracy to rob Sierra, the dissent overlooks the fact that the jury could not convict Gongora unless it also determined that Gongora “should have . . . anticipated” that Sierra’s murder would result from carrying out the conspiracy. 22 No. 07-70031 question from defense counsel about which people were outside the van,45 hinting that the jury questioned the credibility of Vargas’s testimony.