A man whose conviction and death sentence for murdering three brothers within three days was overturned by the California Supreme Court was found guilty again Friday of the shootings that occurred more than two decades ago.
The downtown Los Angeles jury deliberated about a day before convicting Craigen Lewis Armstrong, now 44, of first-degree murder for the Sept. 27, 2001, killing of Christopher Florence, 21, and the fatal shooting of two of the victim’s other brothers — 27-year-old Michael and 29-year-old Torry — three days later in Inglewood.
Jurors also found true the special circumstance allegations of multiple murders, murder during a drive-by shooting and murder carried out to further the activities of a criminal street gang, along with gun and gang allegations.
Armstrong was also convicted of 10 other charges, including two counts each of attempted murder and shooting into an occupied vehicle stemming from the Sept. 30, 2001, shooting, along with charges that from behind bars he directed an attack by fellow gang members on his ex-girlfriend, to whom prosecutors said he had confessed his involvement in the shootings.
In opening statements in Armstrong’s retrial, Deputy District Attorney Carmelia Mejia told the jury that the case went back in time to when Armstrong was a full-fledged gang member.
The prosecutor told the panel that Christopher Florence was “shot because he was at the wrong place at the wrong time” and “made a fatal mistake that cost him his life” after he mistakenly left behind the directions to a young woman’s residence and drove the wrong way down a one-way street into the hub of the gang, where he was wrongly perceived as a gang rival.
The brothers — who sought information about their brother’s killing — went out with a fourth man to get something to eat after Michael Florence received a call from someone who claimed to have information about the slaying, authorities said.
They were “ambushed at a street light,” Mejia told jurors.
Defense attorney Albert DeBlanc Jr. countered that jurors should consider the lesser option of voluntary manslaughter, telling the panel in his closing argument that the defendant they are seeing now 24 years later is different “than when he was into the gang life completely.”
Armstrong’s attorney maintained that his client — who testified in his own defense — told jurors the truth when he said he shot because he feared for his life.
The defense lawyer noted that a gang expert testified that driving the wrong way into that gang area was a very dangerous thing to do, noting that gang members would suspect such a driver was from a rival gang.
DeBlanc also questioned why the victim’s family returned to the neighborhood after the first shooting and why Michael Florence pointed his finger in a gun gesture, saying that “it means I’m going to get you and shoot you.”
He suggested that the brothers should have left the investigation of the shooting to the police, and that they were clearly out trying to find out who had killed their brother.
“He believed in his mind that they were out to do him harm,” he said of his client’s subsequent shooting of the older Florence brothers.
Deputy District Attorney Brian Chang told jurors in his closing argument that it was a “textbook gang case,” arguing that the defendant had intentionally killed the three men and that “nothing remotely points to self-defense.”
The victims’ mother, Brenda Florence, who was called as the prosecution’s first witness during the retrial, said her sons were not associated with any gangs and were “brought up in a Christian home.”
She testified that she heard the gunshots that fatally wounded her two oldest sons about a half-mile away from her home, and that her surviving son, Brian, has changed dramatically since his brothers were shot.
Armstrong is facing life in prison without the possibility of parole, with sentencing set Sept. 19 before Superior Court Judge Ronald S. Coen.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office opted not to seek the death penalty against Armstrong for his retrial, which resulted from an August 2016 ruling by the state’s highest court that found that a juror was improperly removed from the first trial by then-Judge William Pounders during deliberations in the guilt phase of his first trial.