Defense loses bid to remove judge; sentencing likely to proceed
SAN JOSE » The man convicted of killing missing teen Sierra LaMar has lost his bid to stop a Santa Clara County judge from presiding over the final stages of his case, paving the way for his motion for a new trial and sentencing hearing to proceed as early as next month.
Antolin Garcia-Torres, 26, faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole after the jury in June rejected sending him to death row.
His lawyers had tried to disqualify Judge Vanessa A. Zecher, arguing that her failure to disclose that she had once represented the lead investigator in the case — whose credibility has come under fire — rendered her unfit to proceed with the final stages of the case.
But a San Francisco Superior Court judge appointed to handle the defense motion ruled last week that Zecher, who had presided over the monthslong death penalty trial, can be fair and impartial. The next hearing in the case is set for Dec. 12.
“Garcia-Torres has not met the heavy burden required to establish the appearance of bias,” Judge Jeffrey S. Ross concluded in a 10-page opinion denying the defense motion.
Garcia-Torres’ lawyers will likely seek appellate review, attorney Brian J. Matthews said. But the appellate court is not obligated to take up the case, and the move is considered a long shot.
“This portion of the trial process is long overdue and the delay caused needless, unwarranted pain,” said Roger Nelson, one of more than 750 people from around the Bay Area who had searched for Sierra’s body. “I’m happy there will be closure of this segment.”
Garcia-Torres was convicted in May of abducting and killing 15-yearold Sierra as she made her way to her school bus stop in a semirural area north of Morgan Hill early one morning in 2012. He was also found guilty of the 2009 attempted kidnappings of three other women from grocery store parking lots, which the prosecution portrayed as a “training ground” for Sierra’s abduction and murder three years later.
Defense attorneys Al Lopez and Matthews had argued that Zecher’s failure to disclose that she had once represented the prosecution’s lead investigator, Sheriff’s Sgt. Herman Leon — whose integrity has become an issue in the Sierra trial and in another recent murder case — deprived them of the chance to exercise their right to disqualify her without cause before trial.
More than 25 years ago, Leon was sued for wrongful death in a case that involved allegations of excessive force against a mentally ill jail inmate, who died in 1989 after being held down and repeatedly jolted with a Taser. At the time, Zecher worked for the County Counsel’s Office and handled the case.
Zecher said in the court document that although she remembered the case generally, she did not recall that Leon was a named party until Lopez and Matthews brought it up. Leon was one of 14 jail employees named in the lawsuit and played a relatively peripheral role in the incident.
However, the defense had argued that a person aware of the prior representation would “reasonably entertain a doubt” that Zecher would be able to be fair and impartial, one of the legal standards for disqualification in the civil code. Therefore, they claimed, Zecher was unfit to handle motions seeking a new trial on the basis of Leon’s alleged conduct and for Leon’s personnel records.
But Ross disagreed, stating in his opinion that “in light of Leon’s de minimis
role in the Leonti case — one of 14 Sheriff’s Department employees in a case in which she represented the county and Sheriff’s Department for one year, 27 years ago — a fully informed reasonable member of the public would not entertain doubts that Judge Zecher is impartial.”
If the ruling had gone against Zecher, GarciaTorres’ sentencing would be delayed for months while another judge read transcripts of the trial, which stretched for about four months.
In court documents opposing the defense motion for a new trial, the prosecution scoffed at the notion that the verdict should be overturned, vehemently denying that Leon tampered with evidence in the Sierra case, as the defense alleges. Even if he did, prosecutors claim, there is a mountain of other evidence against Garcia-Torres.