Opinion ID: 2567623
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 10

Heading: Marvin Sanchez

Text: Marvin Sanchez's declaration, dated December 15, 2003, was jointly submitted to the referee. Sanchez declared that in 1980 or 1981, he was confined in a Los Angeles County jail unit where Saucedo and petitioner also were confined. Saucedo told Sanchez he had stabbed a Black drug dealer over a bad drug transaction. Saucedo said he had stabbed the dealer multiple times with the dealer's own knife, including in the face and upper torso, and then had thrown the knife onto a riverbank. Saucedo took full credit for the stabbing and never told Sanchez that petitioner had participated. Saucedo also told Sanchez that he (Saucedo) planned to turn state's evidence against petitioner, who was going to prison anyway, and thereafter flee to Mexico. In Sanchez's conversations with petitioner, petitioner denied stabbing the drug dealer. Petitioner told Sanchez he had a feeling that Saucedo was going to turn on him and blame him for the stabbing. After speaking with Saucedo and petitioner, Sanchez contacted then Deputy District Attorney Ito. Although Sanchez did not speak directly with Ito, he met approximately three times with Detectives Kotler and Avila, telling them everything that [Saucedo] had told me about the killing of the [B]lack drug dealer. After he met with the detectives, Sanchez's case was dismissed and he was placed in the witness protection program. On May 5, 1981, Sanchez was given $150 through the program, and in the following month, then Deputy District Attorney Ito applied to the court to obtain additional funds for him, submitting the declaration of Deputy Sheriff Gary Kotler in support. In that declaration, Kotler 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 ... 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. Sanchez was told by prosecutors that he was going to be held in reserve in case they needed [him] to testify against Saucedo. But he was never asked to testify. If an investigator working for petitioner had spoken to him about Saucedo's confession, Sanchez definitely would have answered his questions and told the investigator what I knew. But, no one ever came to talk to me about the drug dealer killing after the few times that I spoke to Detectives Kotler and Avila.