Sierra case goes to the jury
Judge gives families an hour to get to court to hear verdict read
SAN JOSE — Now it’s up to jurors to decide whether missing teenager Sierra LaMar ran away or was killed by the young man in the V-neck sweater they’ve been sitting across from in court for months.
After 13 weeks of testimony and a solid 14 hours this week of closing remarks, bailiff Dennis Nixon on Thursday finally led the jury into the deliberations room to decide whether to acquit or convict Antolin Garcia-Torres, 26, of killing Sierra and attempting to kidnap three other women.
Garcia-Torres has pleaded not guilty in Santa Clara County Superior Court to the four charges against him: the murder of Sierra in 2012 and three counts of trying to kidnap and carjack the other women in 2009 as they returned to their cars late at night in Morgan Hill supermarket parking lots.
Fifteen-year-old Sierra
disappeared on March 16, 2012, on the way to her school bus stop in a rural community north of Morgan Hill. Her body has not been found, despite a yearlong effort by more than 750 volunteers from around the Bay Area.
If the jury convicts Garcia-Torres of murder, the panel would then hear a “penalty phase” of the trial to decide whether he should be sentenced to death or to life in prison without parole. However, if the jury acquits Garcia-Torres, the law prevents prosecutors from trying him again for her murder even if new evidence arises.
Judge Vanessa A. Zecher said Thursday she will give Sierra’s and Torres’ families, as well as the public and many stalwart searchers who looked for her body, an hour to get to the Hall of Justice on Hedding Street to hear the verdict read once it comes in.
The court administration will tweet when the jury has returned a verdict, about an hour before it will be announced in court. The court’s Twitter handle is @ SCSCourt.
“It’s been a long trial, but it’s just a blink of an eye compared to how much time we haven’t had Sierra with us,” said Sierra’s father, Steve LaMar, who has attended the trial every day since it began Jan. 30. “Now we wait and we pray and we hope for justice for Sierra.”
It is impossible to predict when the jury will return with a verdict. However, one of the jurors will be leaving May 16 on a long-planned vacation. If the panel hasn’t decided by then, one of the seven alternate jurors would step in, forcing deliberations to begin anew.
In closing arguments in the “no-body” case this week, defense lawyer Al Lopez contended that Sierra ran away or was kidnapped by someone else. In his closing argument, Lopez said she ran away to escape her “broken home,” noting that she was particularly unhappy with a recent move with her mother from Fremont to the Morgan Hill area.
Some other girls who went missing and were believed dead turned out to have been kidnapped and later were found alive, including California’s Jaycee Dugard.
But in Sierra’s case, prosecutor David Boyd argued in closing remarks, including in a final rebuttal Thursday morning, that Garcia-Torres is guilty of first-degree murder.
“I never said this was a chance encounter,” Boyd said, rejecting the defense’s contention that Garcia-Torres couldn’t have bumped into Sierra because she was still at home when he drove by the morning she went missing. “This was planned, this was cold, and this was calculated. It takes time to finda 15-year-old who fits the bill — vulnerable, alone.”
Garcia-Torres was 11 inches taller than Sierra and outweighed her by 75 pounds.
Boyd told the jury that traces of Sierra’s DNA were found in Garcia-Torres’ car, including on a single strand of her hair on a rope in the trunk. And his DNA was found on her pants, which were discovered near a shed in the middle of a field. He told police they never met.
Garcia-Torres’ fingerprint also was on a battery found on a stun gun dropped by the assailant in one of the supermarket attacks, which the prosecution contends was a warm-up for Sierra’s abduction and murder three years later.
Lopez delivered a “Late Night”-style Top 10 list of reasons why the jury should reject the prosecution’s case. Among them: GarciaTorres’ calm demeanor, as seen in a surveillance video at a branch of Bank of America, which Garcia-Tor- res visited about five hours after Sierra vanished. Boyd on Thursday called his conduct “cold.”
Lopez also ridiculed the prosecution’s death penalty case Wednesday by employing a “bucket of shame,” periodically dropping a red ball — Lottery style — into a clear plastic container.
“That’s what you’ll see — a lot of shame evidence in this case,” attorney Al Lopez told jurors Wednesday.
On Thursday, Boyd delivered a different message.
“Don’t be lured by gimmicks and half-truths,” he said. “Look at the totality of the evidence.”