Opinion ID: 2554480
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Attempts to Prevent Kenny Loza's Testimony

Text: Campos-Alvarez was not arrested until 2006. His former girlfriend, Miradis Viera-Miranda, visited him while he was in the D.C. Jail awaiting trial. She testified that Campos-Alvarez asked her to offer Kenny Loza $5,000 to induce him not to appear in court. Campos-Alvarez renewed this request when Viera-Miranda visited him again in January 2007. He was angered when Viera-Miranda later told him that she didn't want to get involved in nothing. Appellant Marta Campos, Campos-Alvarez's sister, telephoned Viera-Miranda repeatedly to press her about contacting Kenny Loza. Campos left several voice mail messages for Viera-Miranda, who usually did not pick up the phone because she didn't want to get involved. Sometimes Campos and Campos-Alvarez were on the call together to ask Viera-Miranda to help them out. On one occasion, Marta told Viera-Miranda that she and Campos-Alvarez were going to give her three thousand dollars to get in contact with Kenny. Viera-Miranda testified that in some of the phone calls, made between January and April 2007, Campos specifically asked her to offer Kenny Loza money so he won't come to court. Kenny Loza confirmed at trial that Viera-Miranda informed him that Marta Campos told her to call me to offer me money so I wouldn't come to court to testify against [Campos-Alvarez]. According to Viera-Miranda, Campos-Alvarez insisted to her that he was innocent, and she professed to believe that the money was being offered to prevent an innocent man (Campos-Alvarez) from being convicted. Marta Campos also approached Javier Morales's cousin, Melvin Morales, to obtain Kenny Loza's telephone number and address. Melvin's sister Elizabeth Morales overheard Campos tell him she wanted to speak to Kenny to offer him money to not show up to court. Kenny Loza recalled talking with Elizabeth Morales about Campos's efforts to give him money [n]ot to come testify against [Campos-Alvarez]. Melvin Morales, who was the brother of Vatos Locos leader Enrique Morales, was called at trial as a defense witness. He testified that Marta Campos asked him to tell Kenny Loza to be sure her brother was the shooter if he was going to testify against him in court. [2] If Loza was certain, then he should go to court and do what he got to do. But if he was not sure Campos-Alvarez shot him, or was not going to testify truthfully, then he should not go to court because why would he want to get someone in jail for something they didn't do. If everything went well and the case was dismissed, Morales testified, Kenny Loza could probably get some money from Campos-Alvarez.