A state appellate court panel has upheld the convictions of two men found guilty of the killing of a 67-year-old Glendale-area woman who was followed home from a Lynwood shopping center where she and her husband owned a clothing store.
However, the three-justice panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal reversed the special-circumstance allegation of murder during the commission of a robbery which resulted in a life prison sentence without the possibility of parole against one of the men, James Wesley Trotter.
The panel ordered Trotter to be re-sentenced in connection with the Aug. 8, 2017, killing of Hye Soon Oh.
Trotter and co-defendant Devon T. White were convicted of murder, second-degree robbery and possession of a firearm by a felon.
The appellate court panel noted in its 24-page ruling Thursday that Trotter was not in the parking garage when White fatally shot the woman and that he “therefore did not have an immediate opportunity to prevent the murder.
“… As to Trotter’s disgusting and reprehensible behavior after Oh was murdered — filming himself with money and saying it was `all off the bitch’ — this callous indifference to Oh’s death is not enough to show he knowingly created a grave risk of death before the murder,” the justices found.
The panel rejected White’s contention that jurors were improperly instructed in his trial. White is serving a life prison term without the possibility of parole.