Jury begins deliberations in 2018 Watsonville homicide
Closing arguments conclude in murder trial
SANTA CRUZ >> A jury began its deliberations Wednesday morning for a 4-yearold murder case after hearing three weeks of trial testimony.
The Santa Cruz District Attorney's Office is seeking to prove a first-degree murder charge against Miguel Castaneda, a Santa Cruz man arrested April 20, 2018, on Riverside Drive in Watsonville for allegedly shooting to death his former friend and neighbor, Victor Vasquez Lopez, 36. Castaneda, 43, also is accused of committing assault with a firearm when he allegedly pointed his revolver threateningly at Lopez's car passenger afterward.
“Of course he hates Victor,” defense attorney Rory Bartle said Tuesday, during his closing arguments in the case. “If somebody slept with your wife, sired a child and then tried to take that kid back three or four years later … you'd probably hate them, too.”
Bartle suggested his client may have been acting in self-defense and warned jurors to watch for “straw man” arguments set up and knocked down by the prosecution in order to distract from more important issues.
Prosecutor Johanna Schonfield told the jury that a “heat of passion” defense did not jibe with Castaneda's calm demeanor in court and when he took the stand in his own defense last week. Castaneda admitted he had killed Lopez to police investigators and said Lopez had destroyed his life, she said.
“He himself admitted that he killed Victor as revenge for what he had done to him,” Schonfield said. “Revenge is not manslaughter.” Even if Castaneda believed he was acting in selfdefense, Schonfield said, there was “no justification” for his fourth and final shot to Lopez's head as the man lay unarmed, injured and fallen to the ground on the side of the road near where the two men had crashed their cars.
“Your rights as a human being say you don't have to wait to get beat up,” Bartle later argued.
Bartle, whose job is to raise reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury, said the District Attorney's Office had not proven a motive in its case, though the fact of Castaneda fatally shooting Lopez was not in question. Castaneda, he said, was building a new life for himself in Mexico and had everything to lose.
Bartle explained inconsistencies heard “over and over and over again” in Castaneda's testimony by aligning the man's experience in killing Lopez with the trauma felt by a soldier after their first confirmed kill in battle.
“It means he doesn't remember what happened,” Bartle said. “Because he was in the throes of passion.”
The prosecution used Wednesday morning to briefly rebut the defense's arguments, prior to the jury heading into deliberation.