A state appeals court panel has upheld the convictions of three men for the murder of a 21-year-old man whom a prosecutor argued was mistakenly targeted because one of the men wrongly believed that an adult daughter of his had been assaulted by the victim.
Stephen Anthony Heard, now 57; Johnny Sierra Velasquez, now 43; and Jesus Delgado, now 51, were convicted in August 2023 of one count each of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder involving the Aug. 27, 2015, attack on Joshua Rodriguez in a Claremont apartment. He was found dead in Walnut 11 days later.
Jurors also found true the special circumstance allegation of murder while lying in wait, along with an allegation that all three men personally used a firearm and that Heard personally used zip ties.
The panel rejected the special circumstance allegations of murder during the commission of a kidnapping and murder involving the infliction of torture.
Rodriguez, a Pomona resident, was attacked in a Claremont apartment where he had been sleeping. He was found dead with zip ties around his neck and wrists, and an autopsy determined that he had been strangled.
In a ruling Wednesday, the three-justice panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal rejected a claim by Heard and Velasquez that there was insufficient evidence to prove the lying in wait special circumstance allegation.
“The evidence here shows the intent to kill,” the appellate court panel found in its 19-page ruling. “Appellants waited in the alley while one of their group confirmed Rodriguez was present. They made sure others in the apartment would not interfere. They concealed their purpose from Rodriguez and attacked him by surprise from a position of advantage by attacking him while he slept.”
The three men are serving sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Deputy District Attorney Phil Stirling told jurors during the trial that Heard — a gang member — recruited other gang members and associates to help him find and attack Rodriguez after getting permission from a prison-based gang to kill Rodriguez — a member of a separate gang — in the mistaken belief that the young man had assaulted his daughter.
“Vigilante justice gets it wrong,” Stirling said in his closing argument, in which he told jurors that the evidence of intent to kill was “overwhelming.”
The prosecutor noted that Heard’s daughter told her father before Rodriguez was killed that he was not responsible for the attack on her.
Heard’s trial attorney, Christopher Scherer, told jurors that there was “not a single piece of forensic evidence that ties Mr. Heard to this crime scene,” saying that the witnesses being called in the case included a “motley collection” of people who were in a “really bad spot themselves” and “looking to get out of it.”
Velasquez’s trial attorney, Steve Meister, called it a “dad case” and “not a gang case,” adding that Velasquez was “not guilty of the crimes he’s charged with.”
Delgado’s trial attorney, Daniel Nardoni, said his client “did not have any intent to kill Joshua Rodriguez,” was not a gang member and didn’t even know the victim.
Four other people pleaded guilty or no contest to lesser crimes in exchange for lighter sentences.