GUILTY VERDICT
Martin Andrade convicted of killing popular Brawley teen
Ajury on Tuesday found Martin Gabriel Andrade guilty first-degree murder in connection with the fatal El Centro stabbing of 17-year-old Martin Alberto Garza on Jan. 6, 2013.
The announcement produced audible sighs of relief as well as sobbing from members of the Garza family, who had been present in varying numbers throughout the lengthy trial.
“Thank you Lord,” exclaimed Yulil Alonso-Garza, Martin Garza’s mother, in court immediately following county Superior Court Judge Raymond Ayala Cota’s reading of the verdict.
Andrade, 22, of Heber, had been convicted largely on the basis of eyewitness testimony and statements made to authorities in the hours following the fatal incident.
Those same statements and witness testimony had not only placed him at the scene of the crime, but appeared to have convinced the jury that Andrade’s statements and actions amounted to having acted with malice and premeditation.
“I’m satisfied that justice was served, especially for the victim’s family,” said Deputy District Attorney Marco Nuñez following the trial’s conclusion.
The jury of five women and seven men had deliberated for nearly two days before finding that Andrade had fatally stabbed Garza in the heart, essentially dismissing Andrade’s defense attorney’s contention that the evidence demonstrated that another knife-wielding assailant was responsible for Garza’s death.
“The victim’s DNA was on a knife that was held by another individual, not Mr. Andrade,” said defense attorney Donald Levine following the reading of the jury’s verdict.
Garza was a popular Brawley Union High School football player who had accompanied several Brawley friends to an El Centro party that was attended by a number of North Side Centro gang members in the early morning hours of Jan. 6, 2013.
Andrade, among others, was said to have confronted the group of Brawley teens, and in particular Garza, interrogating them about their gang affiliation as the group stood outside the residence in the 300 block of Seventh Street where the party was being held.
The confrontation was eventually de-escalated with the help of a couple of partygoers, but had flared up again after an allegedly intoxicated Andrade rejected appeals to remain calm and then proceeded to stab Garza, the prosecution had successfully argued.
Alonso-Garza said her faith in God had gotten her through the emotionally wrenching trial, and that she had been prepared to accept whatever verdict the jury decided as part of God’s will.
“I had to believe in him and his justice,” she said.
Following the announcement of the verdict, Levine had also stated in court that he plans to motion for a new trial following sentencing. Levine had also requested that Cota authorize transcripts from the entirety of the trial be made available in preparation of his planned motion for a new trial.
“This case was very complicated, with a lot of issues,” Levine explained to Cota while making his request.
A county Superior Court hearing is scheduled for May 19 to allow Cota to rule on authorizing the rendering of the trial’s transcripts.
The prospect of another trial created immediate concerns for Alonso-Garza. In spite of the support both her and her husband had received from their respective employers that had allowed them both to attend trial proceedings, she said she couldn’t fathom having to repeat the experience again.
“If we already went through it once, is there really a need to put our family through it again,” she said.
The trial itself presented little forensic evidence, other than the laboratory-confirmed presence of Garza’s blood on a knife that had been taken away from one of the unidentified assailants that had attacked one of the Brawley teens.
Several witnesses’ testimony, as well as recorded interviews that witnesses had with an El Centro Police Department detective shortly after the fatal incident, had described a chaotic scene where at least two other knife-wielding assailants had attempted to attack members of the Brawley group after the initial clash involving Andrade and Garza.
Andrade also potentially faces an enhanced sentencing, as a result of Cota ruling on Tuesday — after the jury’s verdict was announced — that Andrade’s previous no-contest plea to an assault with a deadly weapon charge in Sept. 21, 2012, amounts to a serious and violent felony.
Andrade is scheduled to appear in court on June 30 for sentencing. He faces a possible 25 years to life in prison as a result of the first-degree murder conviction and the assault with a deadly weapon conviction.
Garza would’ve turned 20 years old on Thursday.