Jury finds Vaca man, 46, guilty of attempted murder in 2018 case
After three days of witness testimony, attorneys’ final arguments and five hours of deliberations, jurors on Wednesday found a 46-year-old Vacaville man guilty of trying to kill another man two years ago in Vacaville.
The panel of six men and six women agreed that Joseph Michael Finocchio, an ex-con, was guilty of attempted murder without premeditation when he shot and wounded James W. Mason, also an ex-con, on Jan. 20, 2018 in the North Village subdivision. Their violent face-off was reportedly prompted by Mason’s befriending Finocchio’s exgirlfriend, Nancy Ottinger.
Sitting at the defense table, Finocchio, showed no outward reaction to the jury’s verdict in Judge Stephanie Grogan Jones’ courtroom in the Justice Center in Fairfield.
When sentenced on Feb. 18, he faces as much as 43 years in state prison because of his prior felony record and enhancements, including the use of a firearm.
Jurors believed the prosecution’s case argued by Deputy District Attorney Young Kim, who got a witness to testify that the firearm used in the shooting was an unregistered .22-caliber Browning semi-automatic handgun.
The firearm was an element in an “old story,” as Kim said in his closing argument last week, that was about “love, break-up, anger, jealousy” and enough jealously that contributed to Finocchio’s firing several shots at Mason, one of them striking him in the chest, near the intersection of North Station Drive and Twilight Street.
He noted that Finocchio and Mason had engaged in a fight on Jan. 18, reminded jurors that a witness heard Finocchio say on Jan. 19 that he would kill Mason and Ottinger if he saw them both again and asserted that evidence showed that Finocchio fired three rounds into a vehicle driven by Mason during the late hours of Jan. 20.
Kim also said that two police investigators who interviewed Mason later in a Kaiser Permanente Vacaville Medical Center emergency room said Mason identified Finocchio as the shooter.
The attorney then briefly discussed circumstantial evidence in the case, including investigators finding the .22-caliber handgun in a dog food bin in a residence on North Station Drive.
Pointing to Finocchio, Kim said, “The evidence is clear — the defendant was the shooter.”
He also showed a neighbor’s front-door surveillance video that showed Mason driving down Twilight Street, with the microphone picking up three distinct gunshot sounds.
In a challenge to Kim, defense attorney Curtis Boyd, using a computer-aided slide presentation, asserted that the prosecution had not proved the case beyond a reasonable doubt and that Mason had a criminal history that includes assault, theft, possession of a firearm, evading police and was on probation at the time of the shooting.
Mason, who could not be located to present testimony, also admitted to being an alcoholic and methamphetamine addict during a 2019 preliminary hearing, when he was in jail on another charge, Boyd said.
Boyd cited conflicting evidence and witness credibility — Ottinger, who had ended a six-year relationship with Finocchio before befriending Mason, admitted to being high on drugs on Jan. 20 — and other witness testimony “generated many more questions than answers.”
At one point, Boyd appeared to suggest that Mason may have initiated the gunfire on Jan. 20, questioned the police investigation and concluded that the charges against Finocchio “demanded a thorough investigation that was never completed.”
In the end, the jury found the evidence weighed against Finocchio.
Finocchio was initially charged with attempted murder and possession of a controlled substance. He also was booked on an outof-county, no-bail warrant citing excessive speed on a highway and driving without a license.