June 22, 2001 LA Times

Killer of LAPD Officer Is Given Life Sentence;
Court: Jury quickly decides to spare the gang member's life. A juror said circumstances didn't warrant death penalty.

BYLINE: STEVE BERRY, TWILA DECKER, TIMES STAFF WRITERS

BODY:
In a surprisingly quick verdict, a Los Angeles County Superior Court jury Thursday voted to spare the life of a 23-year-old street gang member convicted of the ambush-style killing of LAPD Officer Filbert Cuesta Jr. in 1998.

After less than three hours of deliberations, the jury of seven men and five women recommended to Judge Robert J. Perry that Catarino Gonzalez Jr., a member of the notorious 18th Street gang, be sent to prison for life without the possibility of parole.

A member of the jury said there was little dissension in their deliberations over Gonzalez's fate.

The juror, who spoke to reporters on condition that she not be identified, said that although the jury agreed that the murder of a police officer was horrible, "there was no prior history of violence with the defendant and no circumstances that warranted the death penalty."

During closing arguments demanding that Gonzalez pay with his life for taking Cuesta's, Deputy Dist. Atty. Darren Levine spoke with such passion that he prompted a tearful courtroom outburst from the defendant's mother.

On Thursday, Levine called Gonzalez a "coldblooded, heartless assassin." Nevertheless, he said he still felt "justice was done."

Gonzalez's family, though relieved that the jury did not recommend death, remained bitter over the jury's guilty verdict last week. "They found him guilty without any evidence," said his mother, Teresa Gonzalez.

Gonzalez's older brother, Oscar, called the outcome "God's way, not ours. We are still a family that will work together and pray together" to cope with the trial's outcome.

Oscar said his brother's life spiraled out of control when Oscar left the Crenshaw area to join the Marines. "In the neighborhood we live in, if you don't have an older brother as a strong male role model, it's almost a given that he would fall into a gang."

Defense attorney Michael Artan said he will appeal the guilty verdict on grounds that police refused Gonzalez's request for an attorney after he turned himself in and coerced incriminating statements from him.

The jury's decisions to find him guilty yet spare his life were "bittersweet," Artan said. "All the jurors said they struggled [with the guilty verdict]," he said.

Gonzalez is the second defendant in a month convicted of killing a Los Angeles police officer but whose life was spared by a downtown Criminal Courts Building jury. Late last month, a jury recommended that Jaime Mares, 23, be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for his part in the shooting death of Officer Brian Brown, 27.

Cuesta's family was not in court Thursday when the Gonzalez jury returned. In testimony, his widow and parents described how Cuesta was the center of their lives.

Gonzalez was convicted of shooting Cuesta as the officer sat in his patrol car with partner Richard Gabaldon on Aug. 9, 1998, on Carlin Street in the Crenshaw area. With their overhead lights on and motor running, they were waiting for other officers to help them break up a noisy wedding party attended by gang members. Shortly after midnight, bullets from a 9-millimeter semiautomatic Glock pistol slammed into the car and blasted out the rear window, striking Cuesta in the back of the head but missing Gabaldon.

That single act, Levine argued earlier this week, "caused such pain and destruction that many lives will never be repaired."

"I don't believe that this man, who can assassinate an on-duty police officer . . . is entitled to any less punishment than what he gave to Officer Cuesta," Levine said. Cuesta, 26, was the father of two small children.

Levine and Deputy Dist. Atty. Loni Petersen contended that Gonzalez shot Cuesta partly because he believed the officer was trying to arrest him for violating probation conditions set for an earlier drug violation.

"He traded 2 1/2 years of his freedom for the entire life of Officer Cuesta," Levine said. "What kind of trade is that? What kind of human being would do that?"

Defense attorney David Evans pleaded for mercy for Gonzalez, arguing that the death penalty should be reserved for serial killers and mass murderers, for those he described as "the worst of the worst."

As horrible as the murder of a police officer is, this killing did not fit that criteria, he said. "It was an isolated act of violence."

The jury apparently agreed. The juror interviewed after the verdict Thursday said Gonzalez had a tightknit, loving family behind him.

"This [shooting] was one day out of his life, and I couldn't see any evidence that he would ever have done anything like this again."

She said the jury recognized that public reaction will be that they "spared a cop killer."

"We all thought about that, but the public was not here . . . they couldn't see the evidence we saw," she said.

She said the decision was never in serious doubt. It took two votes. In the first, 10 jurors voted for sparing his life and two were undecided.

Finding him guilty was not so easy. The jury deliberated 12 days.

The key testimony against Gonzalez came from two people who said they saw Gonzalez fire the shots and several incriminating statements he made to police interrogators. Although one witness was a gang member whose story changed several times, the second was an uninvolved resident who said she was looking out of her second-story apartment window when the shooting erupted.

The murder weapon was never found.

Defense attorney Artan vigorously attacked both witness accounts, saying the gang member had a grudge against Gonzalez and the resident at first told police she couldn't tell who fired the shot.

Artan also argued that police detectives tricked and bullied Gonzalez into saying that he shot at the police car to scare the officer inside. He said the detectives frightened Gonzalez and wore him down so much that he finally relented and merely parroted a version of events that police fed to him.

The juror said they did not entirely discount Artan's argument. She said some parts of Gonzalez's trial testimony seemed scripted, but other details rang true.

She said the jury took two votes before finding unanimity in favor of first-degree murder and attempted murder. The first vote was 8 to 2 for guilty with two jurors undecided. The second vote was 10 to 2, but the juror was not clear on whether the two were undecided or in favor of acquittal.

Formal sentencing is scheduled for July 31.

GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Catarino Gonzalez Jr. smiles after hearing the jury's verdict of life in prison, and not death. PHOTOGRAPHER: BOB CHAMBERLIN / Los Angeles Times