Last Friday, Franc Cano, 27, and Steven Dean Gordon, 45, were arrested in Anaheim.  On Monday, they were both charged with four counts of special circumstances murder and four counts of felony rape.   If they are convicted, they will face a minimum of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole and could face the death penalty.  

Background

Both men were previously charged with lewd and lascivious acts with a child under fourteen and were believed to have met in 2012 when they both cut their ankle bracelets and boarded a grey hound bus to Las Vegas.  They were apprehended two weeks later by federal agents and were returned to CA where they were charged and convicted for failing to register as sex offenders.  After the conviction, both reported monthly and were ordered to wear government issued GPS devises. 

Meanwhile, four women went missing.  Santa Ana Police Chief Carols Rojas reported that the two men “were not on our radar whatsoever.”  He explained that three of the women missing from Santa Ana, went completely off the grid.  They had been searching everywhere when the body of Jarrae Nykkole Estep was found on a conveyor belt at an Anaheim trash-sorting plant.  Once authorities realized that Jarrae had been murdered, and that she shared a similar profile with the other three missing women, they shifted the focus of their investigation. 

The ankle bracelets worn by the accused helped police identify Cano and Gordon as suspects and authorities suspect that there are more victims.

What are Special Circumstances Murders?

“Special Circumstances” are sentencing enhancements that can be used to increase a murder sentence and qualify it for the death penalty.   In 1972, in Furman v. Georgia,the United States Supreme Court found that applying the death penalty without any limitations was a violation of the 8^th Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.  In response, California enacted Penal Code 190.2.  This section sets out the “special circumstances” that qualify a first degree murder conviction for the death penalty.  The list is a bit all over the place because it is comprised of both legislative additions, and voter additions.  Some of the circumstances include; murder of police, murder of a judge, murder’s involving torture, driving by shootings, bombings and more.  In this case, the special circumstances include murder during the commission of rape, multiple murders, and lying in wait.   

You can read your cell phone map, until you can’t.

Steven Spriggs was driving in stop and go traffic while looking at the map on his cell phone.  An officer saw him holding the device and proceeded to pull him over and issue him a $165.00 citation.   The Superior Court of Fresno County affirmed the conviction, but the Court of Appeal disagreed with their conclusion and reversed.

The Court of Appeals determined that Vehicle Code Section 23133(a) did not prohibit all hand held uses of a cell phone.  The court explained that the code section merely “prohibits ‘listening and talking’ on a wireless telephone unless the telephone is used in a hands-free mode.”  In support of this conclusion, the court explained that the legislative history of the code provision focused on the distraction caused by holding a conversation, not use of the device itself.  Further, that subsequent actions by the legislature that specifically prohibited texting while driving indicated that the legislature had not contemplated a prohibition against all phone use. 

For many, this muddies the water even more.  How exactly will officers be able to tell if someone is looking at a map or sending a text?  Now that the court has put their foot down on map use, officers are retreating to a different law, not included in the 2008 cell provisions, that prohibits “driving while distracted.”  Officers indicate that they will continue to pull over distracted drivers under this provision.

The elephant in the room: opening the back door to racial profiling

With the increasing number of blurry lines when it comes to driving and using your phone, I think it’s no secret that this law can be used as a pretext for racial profiling.  Do you know why I pulled you over? Because it looked like you were holding something in your hand that could have been a cell phone, and you may have been attempting to text while driving.   That could be anyone, at almost any given time.  

The moral of the story, get one of those mats that holds your cell phone to the dashboard for all to see.  

I can no longer resist the urge to write about this Casey-Anthony look alike murder trial in the case against Jodi Arias. Earlier this week, Juror #5 was dismissed and escorted out of the courthouse in tears. This, after the defense made a motion to dismiss the miscreant juror for alleged misconduct and a motion for mistrial. The former was granted and the latter denied.

There were a total of 18 jurors hearing the trial, including alternates. Ultimately, a panel of 12 will make the decision. Arias could face the death penalty if convicted. She is accused of killing her ex-boyfriend back in 2008 and claims she did so in self-defense.

Why Was Juror #5 Dismissed?

Juror #5 has been described as being a particularly attentive juror who took copious notes throughout the trial. So what did this errant Arias juror do? She made statements that showed bias, or her inability to be impartial, in the presence of other jurors. The records are sealed, so we are left to fill in the blanks as to what was actually said. (At least until the gag order is lifted and Juror #5 releases her “exclusive” interview with every news station that will take her.) Anyway, Judges are not quick to dismiss jurors, especially those who have already spent three months serving on a long cause trial. In other words, Juror #5’s statements must have been pretty egregious to have led to such a ruling.

Prosecutor’s Publicity Parade

What troubles me is the manner in which this misconduct was revealed to the defense. Counsel for Arias was questioning the Prosecutor, Mr. Juan Martinez, about his signing autographs and posing for pictures outside the courthouse. It was during that publicity melee that prosecutor Martinez overheard Juror #5 make the statements indicating her bias, he told defense counsel. The defense also made a motion to dismiss based on prosecutorial misconduct. The motion was denied but as a result, jurors were called into court one by one to be questioned about what they had seen of Martinez’s tryst with the press.

Not only do her actions form the basis for her own dismissal, but what Juror #5 pulled will also be scrumptious grounds for an appeal on the grounds that other jurors, who were present at the time of the statements, were likewise biased and unable to render an impartial verdict. That, coupled with the prosecutor’s participation in the whole charade, would certainly give me pause before accepting the validity of this jury’s verdict.

A breakdown of the evidence in the Jodi Arias trial coming soon!