Death sentence upheld for Antioch man

The state Supreme Court upheld the death sentence Thursday of an Antioch man who killed his pregnant wife and their 2-year-old daughter in 1996, and later told his mother he did it because his wife “wouldn’t stop blabbing” about his bank robberies.

Christopher Henriquez was 24 when he strangled his wife, Carmen, 25, who was eight months pregnant, and clubbed and choked their daughter, Zuri, in their apartment in August 1996. He admitted the killings to police.

Henriquez had been paroled from prison in New York in July 1995 after a robbery sentence and, the court said, robbed two banks in San Francisco a month before the murders. His wife moved out that month but, according to relatives, returned to her husband after he promised not to rob another bank.

The killings occurred a day after the couple and their child returned from a trip to Disneyland. His mother, Deborah Henriquez, who was also on the trip, testified that her son came to her house the day after they got back, looking dazed. The next day, she said, he told her that he had killed his wife and child in a fit of anger.

His mother testified that Henriquez had told his wife that he planned to rob another bank, and she “wouldn’t stop blabbing her mouth” to her friends. She reported the conversation to police, who went to the apartment and found the bodies.

A Contra Costa County jury convicted him of two counts of first-degree murder and returned a death verdict.

In Thursday’s unanimous ruling, the state’s high court rejected a defense argument that the county violated Henriquez’s right to a jury drawn from a cross-section of the community because of an underrepresentation of African Americans, who made up 8.1 percent of the county population but only 4.8 percent of those reporting for jury duty at the time of his trial.

There was no evidence of “systematic exclusion,” Justice Leondra Kruger said, citing a judge’s findings that African Americans in the county reported for jury service less often than other groups, and that the county was not to blame.

On another issue, she said the prosecutor did not violate Henriquez’s right to a fair trial by telling the jury that one reason for a death sentence was the “vengeance” society was entitled to take for the killings. Such comments are allowable as long as they are not the main argument for the death penalty, Kruger said.

Deputy Public Defender Oscar Bobrow, a lawyer for Henriquez, said the court had given short shrift to defense evidence that the county was responsible for racial imbalance on its juries by holding all felony trials in Martinez and none in Richmond, where most of its African American residents live. He said the defense will present that argument when it takes the case to federal court.

The case is People vs. Henriquez, S089311.