Opinion ID: 624771
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: facts

Text: On March 20, 2003, Crisantos Moran, a Texas Syndicate member, was murdered. Garcia had pled guilty to this murder in Texas state court, and was later tried on the federal offenses enumerated above. At Garcia’s federal trial, the Government called codefendant Noel De Los Santos (“De Los Santos”) to testify as to the circumstances of Moran’s death. De Los Santos testified that at a March 2003 Texas Syndicate meeting, the gang’s leadership discussed the murder of Carlos Salinas, a member of a rival gang. The task of killing Salinas was assigned to Moran at this meeting. Garcia and De Los Santos were to accompany Moran and ensure that he killed Salinas. On March 20, 2003, Garcia, De Los Santos, and Moran drove to Salinas’s house, whereupon Moran exited the vehicle and approached the house. Moran, however, returned to the car and reported that nobody was at the house. De Los Santos testified that he interpreted this to mean that Moran did not want to carry out the killing. He explained that under Texas Syndicate rules, if someone “doesn’t do his job, he gets killed,” so De Los Santos decided to kill Moran. Garcia drove the car to a secluded field where De Los Santos shot Moran in the head. Moran fell to the ground, where he lay motionless, and De Los Santos shot him again while he was on the ground. When asked, “[W]hat did . . . Garcia do?” De Los Santos replied, “He came around and shot him too. . . . Like six times.” The Government also called Mario Garcia, Garcia’s brother, to testify as well. He testified that Garcia told him that “Boy [i.e., De Los Santos] had shot and killed him—Moran,” and that Garcia “shot [Moran] afterwards when [Moran] 15 Case: 11-40039 Document: 00511778997 Page: 16 Date Filed: 03/06/2012 No. 11-40039 was laying down [sic].” The Government also introduced Garcia’s guilty plea in Texas court to the murder of Moran. The final major piece of evidence in the Government’s case came from the testimony of the medical examiner, Dr. Fulgencio Salinas. Dr. Salinas opined that Moran “died of multiple gunshot wounds to different parts of the body.” Dr. Salinas explained that Moran’s corpse had eight gunshot wounds, one of which was to the head. Based on the head wound’s characteristics, Dr. Salinas opined that the shooter would have been between six inches and two or three feet away to cause this kind of wound. Dr. Salinas testified that a gunshot wound to head of that type might have caused instantaneous death, but that “sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t.” Dr. Salinas, however, also observed that there was evidence of a “vital reaction” in the blood vessels surrounding the other gunshot wounds in Moran’s body indicating that Moran’s heart may have still been pumping after the gunshot to his head when the other wounds were inflicted.