Recently in Rolling Hills Category

Soon after Joe Nino and Miguel Torres were convicted - for the second time - in May, Nino's former girlfriend sent a letter to Deputy District Attorney Craig Hum claiming she was with Nino on Dec. 2, 2001 - the night Juan Vasquez was shot and killed execution style in a drainage ditch by a Rolling Hills school.

Why the Arizona prison guard waited nearly eight years and two trials to present herself as an alibi is not known. Nino's attorney, Jeff Gray, told Torrance Superior Court Judge Eric Taylor he investigated the claim and believes she is one of several reasons why his client should have a new trial.

However, Miguel Torres' attorneys - Jaclin Awad, who was in court, and Matthew Fletcher, who was not - asked for more time to prepare. Gray didn't want to put off arguing his new trial motion, but his client did. Because Hum will be involved in another murder trial downtown for a couple months, Nino and Torres will return for their motion and sentencing hearing on Oct. 1.

Outside of court, Hum called the former girlfriend's statement "interesting," especially since Nino gave a statement to police about his activities that night and nothing he said mentioned her. She was also interviewed by police back then, but only said Nino's car didn't have an alarm (neighbors near the crime scene reported hearing a car alarm).

Meanwhile, on our last story about the trial, the user comments are quite heated - both from those who know the parties involved and those who don't.

Previously:

Tight security and tense emotions during Rolling Hills murder verdict

Torrance Superior Court Judge Eric Taylor's courtroom was pretty filled yesterday for the reading of the verdicts in Joe Nino and Miguel Torres' trial. About two-thirds of the audience were their family members, while the other third were family and friends of the dead man - Juan Vasquez.

Before the verdicts were read, the audience was silent. A few women on the defendants' side held their hands as if they were in prayer. One woman cupped rosary beads between her hands.

Meanwhile, more than a dozen bailiffs took posts around the courtroom. "Try and control your emotions, no outbursts please," one of them told the crowd. "It's most important that you remain seated so the deputies don't interpret anything." Everyone's cellular telephones were confiscated - a move I've never seen before - to keep onlookers from contacting anyone outside the courtroom. After the verdicts were read, jurors were whisked away out a back door and no one from the courtroom could leave. Vasquez's family was dismissed 20 minutes later, the defendants' family members were allowed to go about 10 minutes after them. It didn't appear that there was any trouble.

Even during the first trial and before, this was an emotionally-driven case with the defendants' supporters vehemently proclaiming Nino's and Torres' innocence and informant Erick Velasquez's guilt. The comments following today's story will give you a pretty good taste of that debate.

Previous entries are here.

The jury, which has deliberated off-and-on over the past week or so, indicated this afternoon they reached verdicts in the murder retrial for Joe Nino and Miguel Torres. However, Torres' defense attorney couldn't make it to the courthouse in time, so the verdicts will be read Monday afternoon at 1:30 p.m.

We'll let you know when we do....

Previously:

Jury out on Rolling Hills murder

After three days of closing arguments and two months of trial, the jury finally has the case in the Joe Nino and Miguel Torres murder trial. We'll keep you posted on the verdicts.

Previously:

Nino and Torres Rolling Hills murder trial closing arguments

I expected to go to day two of three of closing arguments today in the Joe Nino and Miguel Torres murder retrial for the slaying of their friend in Rolling Hills. That's what happens when I don't check before I go. Turns out, there was some disagreement over jury instructions just before closing arguments were to begin Wednesday. They're now scheduled to begin Friday afternoon and expected to last into early next week.

Previously:

Rolling Hills murder trial takes a sabbatical

The trial for Joe Nino and Miguel Torres is on pause so that the court can accommodate jurors' spring break plans. The trial, which began Feb. 18, has far surpassed it's original time estimate of a month. The prosecutor indicates he's still presenting his case-in-chief, and will continue to do so when the trial resumes on April 14.

Previously:

Nino and Torres murder retrial moving along ... slowly

Checked in this morning with Deputy District Attorney Craig Hum, who is prosecuting Joe Nino and Miguel Torres in their second trial for killing a friend in Rolling Hills.

He said the trial is proceeding without any major twists or new revelations that would take it off the course he laid out during opening statements on Feb. 18. It is, however, waaaaaay behind schedule and spring break in a couple weeks may prove a problem for keeping jurors. Hum said he expects there's at least three weeks left in the trial, which is only proceeding in the afternoons.

Previously:

Rolling Hills murder trial underway

Rolling Hills murder retrial - take two

In 2002, Rolling Hills Covenant Church was experiencing a strange series of incidents in which someone broke in and used the church computers to look up child pornography. During investigation of one such incident, sheriff's deputies from Lomita recovered "human semen and exrement near the computers, as well as multiple Xerox printed pages depicting the computer history of Web sites, links and unidentified female minors associated with the church computer system," according to an FBI affidavit filed in federal court last week.

Deputies responded to the church on July 29, 2002, for a burglary call, and caught Richard Welton as he tried to flee.

According to the District Attorney's office, Welton pleaded no contest to two burglary counts and was sentenced to five years in prison in October 2002.

A similarily crude pattern of crimes resurfaced more recently at some West Covina churches in the years since Welton's parole. This time, Welton was connected through the DNA he leaves behind. He is back in federal custody and was recently indicted by a federal grand jury for child pornography possession.

Our colleagues at the San Gabriel Valley Tribune have the latest, as well as a link to the documents that detail Welton's alleged activities ... if you're into that kind of thing.

Like I wrote in my story in today's Daily Breeze, it seems Joe Nino and Miguel Torres' second trial won't be vastly different from their first one in terms of evidence, defense and such.

I'm not privy to all the pretrial evidentiary motions Judge Eric Taylor made, but they went over a couple last minute ones before opening statements yesterday that were kinda interesting.

For one, Erick Velasquez, the prosecution's star witness with the immunity deal, cannot tell the jury that he was carrying around a Smith & Wesson 9mm handgun because he wanted to be a badass like Torres - who always carried a gun. This ruling appears subject to Velasquez actually being able to establish with what frequency Torres allegedly carried a gun.

Also, when talking about the car tire rims that supposedly supplied Torres with a motive to kill, no one can mention that that they were stolen. (Juan Vasquez apparently had the rims as a result of a carjacking he did with Nino.)

In addition, in the first trial, it was said that Torres suggested they call Nino to take care of Vasquez by saying "he's a pretty crazy guy." That statement can't be said to the jury this time.

The trial is running in the afternoons only and is expected to take weeks, if not more than a month. We'll be revisting it here and there on the blog, and will, of course, bring you the verdict.

Retrial gets underway this afternoon in Torrance for Joe Nino and Miguel Torres, who are accused of killing a friend they had disputes with. They allegedly conspired together to get a bullet in 20-year-old Juan Vasquez's head in a drainage ditch behind Rancho del Mar Continuation School in Rolling Hills in 2001.

They were convicted of capital murder in 2003 and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

However, their convictions were overturned in July 2007 by the appellate court, which found prosecutors wrongly booted minorities from the jury.

Opening statements will begin this afternoon, but not expected to conclude until tomorrow. We'll have a full story after everyone gets a turn in Friday's Daily Breeze. Until then, I'll try to do some updates here and Twitter bits from the courtroom @dbreezecourts. You can also check out my Twitter feed over there ---->

The trial is sure to have some drama, partly because Torres' attorney, Matthew Fletcher, is a, uh, strong advocate. We've heard he's already been tossed from the courtroom at least once by Judge Eric Taylor after refusing to drop an argument about whether his client should be called "Miguel" or "Michael" during trial. In the first trial, he was close to being held in contempt and jailed by now retired Judge James Ideman after Fletcher ignored Ideman's order to not ask a certain question of a witness. Fletcher has gone to jail on at least one other case.