Final arguments end jail murder trial

After more than a month of testimony, a jury heard closing arguments Monday in the 2022 gang jailhouse murder trial of Jason Cortez.

Among an extensive list of witnesses called to the stand was 29-year-old Cortez himself, who told defense attorney Zach Schwarzbach that he had woken to a third cellmate, Mario Lozano, standing behind victim German Carrillo with a bedsheet wrapped around Carrillo's neck.

“When I got up to see, it didn't seem like he (Carrillo) was putting up much of a fight,” Cortez testified last week.

Santa Cruz County Jail corrections officers found Carrillo dead in his cell bed, according to testimony, some 36 hours after he had been shanked and choked to death on the morning of Oct. 13, 2022. Lozano was convicted of Carrillo's killing and sentenced to prison earlier this year in a separate case.

Living in the cell with Carrillo's dead body for nearly two days, Cortez testified, was “obviously confusing, scary, just a mix of emotions.” Cortez also testified that he flushed the shank used on Carrillo at Lozano's direction, then helped move Carrillo's dead body back onto his bed and later picked up his meals in order to deceive jail personnel.

During early trial testimony, Cortez's demeanor after the killing, as depicted on jail video surveillance, was depicted as “nonchalant,” Schwarzbach said. He asked Cortez if that was accurate.

“At that point, honestly, I'm thinking about myself and how I'm surviving. I didn't want to show any, I guess, weakness. I didn't want these guys to think that I could be victimized, so I had to put my emotions in control.”

Santa Cruz County Assistant District Attorney Ilia McKinney built a case pointing to Cortez — who was jumped into a Watsonville gang at age 12 and had served in a position of gang authority during stints in prison and at the jail — as a willing accomplice in the murder.

During her closing arguments Monday, McKinney argued that Cortez's actions were part of a larger jail gang conspiracy to fatally punish Carrillo for misusing his access to fellow gang members' commissary account personal identification numbers. All members of the gang, McKinney argued, knew what was happening — that Carrillo had been “deemed” and was to be punished for his actions — and played their roles, including Cortez.

“He is not the dummy that he tries to play himself out to be during this brief window of time in October, when he claims to have no idea that a removal meant the removal of German Carrillo and that he had no idea that German Carrillo was targeted for death. He's not somebody who's in the dark or unsophisticated. He is intelligent, he's educated, he is experienced.”

Schwarzbach was scheduled to deliver the defense's closing arguments Monday afternoon, prior to the jury's being sent out to deliberate.