A state appellate court panel has upheld a judge’s ruling that rejected a bid for re-sentencing by one of two men convicted of the shooting death of a Los Angeles hardware store owner during a botched 2002 robbery.
In a ruling Thursday, the three-justice panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal noted that Jorge Sandoval “came to the hardware store with a loaded firearm and immediately confronted Claro Cortez, which caused Cortez and Sandoval to exchange gunfire” and that he was “not simply standing by” in case co-defendant Jorge Martinez needed back-up or to watch for police.
“Sandoval escalated the robbery into a three-way gun battle that resulted in the deaths of two people,” the appellate court panel wrote in its 15-page ruling. “Those actions supported the trial court’s finding Sandoval acted with reckless indifference to human life.”
Sandoval and Martinez were initially convicted in February 2004 of Cortez’s Dec. 17, 2002, shooting death inside Marce’s Hardware at 4500 S. Main St.
But a state appellate court panel overturned their convictions in January 2007, ruling that the trial court erred in forcing Martinez, Sandoval and a third defendant to “share one defense interpreter during trial without a valid waiver of their rights to individual interpreters.”
During their retrial in 2008 in which they were convicted again, Martinez and Sandoval each had their own Spanish interpreters.
The retrial did not include a second murder charge involving a 62-year- old customer, Vincent Fredericks, who was also killed during the attempted robbery. That charge was dismissed during the first trial because there was insufficient evidence that Fredericks was shot by one of the defendants rather than the store owner during a gunbattle in the store.
Both men were sentenced in 2008 to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
At the pair’s sentencing, Superior Court Judge Michael Pastor called Sandoval a “predator” and said the two “took advantage” of an innocent, harmless man.
Martinez has also filed a petition seeking re-sentencing.