Jury: Strong eligible for death penalty
Defense gets to argue its case Monday
A jury has decided that Preston Strong, who has been convicted of six counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of two adults and four children in the 2005 La Mesa Street murders, is eligible for the death penalty.
Strong was found guilty earlier this week of killing 35-year-old Luis Rios, 29-year-old Adrienne Heredia and her children, ages 6 to 13, at their residence, 2037 W. La Mesa St.
It was also the first time jurors were told that Strong is already serving a life sentence for the 2007 killing of Dr. Satinder Gill, a Yuma physician who was strangled and bludgeoned in his home.
Prosecutors had not been able to share that information until Friday because the court did not want to risk the jurors possibly being influenced by that conviction.
The jury of eight women and four men made the decision Friday afternoon after deliberating for about an hour. The decision is the first half of the penalty phase of the 50-year-old Strong’s capital murder trial.
In the next phase of the proceedings, which begins Monday, the defense will begin presenting its case, hoping to convince jurors that Strong should be spared death and sentenced to prison instead.
In order for Strong to have been found eligible for execution, the prosecution had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that certain “aggravating factors,” or circumstances that make the murders serious enough to warrant the death penalty, existed at the time of the killings.
In her presentation to the jury, prosecutor Karolyn Kaczorowski of the Yuma County Attorney’s Office, called a witness and showed jurors a court document indicating that Strong was already serving a life sentence.
She also told jurors that evidence presented at trial clearly showed that more than one person was murdered, four of the victims were less than 15 years old,
and that the murders were committed in a cold and calculating manner.
“When we are done we are going to ask you to find that all four of these circumstances were proven,” Kaczorowski said to the jury before beginning her presentation.
Attorney Bill Fox of the Yuma County Public Defender’s Office, however, argued that the prosecution did not prove the crimes his client had been convicted of were committed in a calculated manner.
Fox said for the murders to amount to having been calculated, the murderer would have had to have a plan, and whoever committed the La Mesa Street murders clearly did not, based on the evidence.
He explained that the killer was not prepared and did not bring what he or she needed. For example, Fox said had the killer planned to bind the victims they would have brought something to use instead of the electrical cords that had been found on the victims.
Ultimately the jury determined that prosecution had proven three of the alleged aggravating factors on both of the adults and all four on each of the children.
If the jury had found the prosecution had not proven the aggravating factors it was alleging, Strong would have automatically been sentenced to life in prison.