A 30-year-old man fatally shot a man in Desert Hot Springs in 2021 because he was irrationally jealous, a prosecutor told jurors Wednesday, while the defendant’s attorney alleged that one of the witnesses lied to pin his culpability onto her client.
Daniel Ray Martinez of Desert Hot Springs is charged with one felony count each of murder and being a felon and narcotic addict in possession of a firearm. He additionally faces a sentence-enhancing allegation of discharging a firearm causing great bodily injury.
His co-defendant, 41-year-old Jesus Gabriel Pena, is charged as an accessory for allegedly deleting evidence.
The charges stem from the Sept. 8, 2021 fatal shooting of Javier “Happy” Torres.
Deputy District Attorney Samantha Paixao told jurors Wednesday during closing arguments at the Larson Justice Center in Indio that Martinez didn’t like Torres because the decedent was previously in a relationship with his girlfriend, so when they got into an argument and he found out they were both in her friend Jonathan Berry’s house he drove there, kicked down the door, shot Torres three times and fled the scene.
“This is made up in his head. … They weren’t in the same room,” Paixao said.
She added that Pena admitted to using the home’s surveillance footage to see what the girlfriend did throughout the day and that a recorded interview with police shows his guilt because of his certainty of not being in any video footage and how he stumbled over his words when he was asked directly.
Paixao said Torres was dropped off by Pena at the fire department in Desert Hot Springs and that he ultimately died from the gunshot wounds.
At the end of her closing argument, Paixao asked jurors to find Martinez guilty of first-degree murder and Pena guilty of deleting video surveillance footage.
Martinez’s defense attorney, Andrea Bouchard, told jurors that they were given a false premise and that they were asked to believe testimony from Berry, who she said is unreliable and might even be the true culprit.
“Let’s not forget about Mr. Berry’s immunity agreement. … Because he’s concerned about his own interests. He knows that if he sticks to the story that he told the police … that got him released at that time and free of being charged, that he gets away free and clear,” Bouchard said. “He has an incentive to stick to that story.”
She concluded her closing argument by telling jurors that the facts don’t add up and asked them to look through the evidence and find her client not guilty.
Pena’s defense attorney, Alexander Reed, told jurors that his client had no motive to protect Martinez because they have no evidence to connect them as friends and that there was not a thorough enough investigation to prove that Pena manipulated anything in the surveillance system.
Jurors began deliberating Wednesday afternoon.
Martinez was arrested in San Diego County. He is being held at the John Benoit Detention Center in Indio in lieu of $1.05 million bail.