Results tagged “Erick Velasquez” from Crime & Courts

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.

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.