A 29-year-old man has been acquitted on charges stemming from a stabbing in a Lake Forest home that injured a man and his mother four years ago.
Jose Daniel Zuniga Castro was acquitted Wednesday of mayhem and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon, all felonies, as well as a misdemeanor count of battery. Jurors, who deliberated for about a day, also rejected sentencing enhancements for inflicting great bodily injury on his accusers.
Zuniga Castro had been in custody since his arrest Feb. 23, 2021. Defense attorney Cameron Talley asked Orange County Superior Court Judge Patrick Donahue to release his client immediately, but the judge ordered him back to jail so deputies could process him out.
“Hopefully by tonight they can release him,” Donahue said.
Talley said Zuniga Castro would buy marijuana from Stephen Trembley, and on the night Zuniga Castro was arrested, he apparently got the drug laced with methamphetamine and was acting erratically, Talley said.
Deputy District Attorney Shane Henry said Zuniga Castro was “screaming” in front of his home in the 100 block of Primerose in Lake Forest on Feb. 23, 2021, when his mother told him to come inside.
Zuniga Castro slapped her and fled in sweatpants to Trembley’s house on Rue Fontaine, claiming he had been kicked out, Henry said.
Trembley let him in the house, and from there, the facts of the case diverged.
Henry argued that Zuniga Castro was “agitated” and wanted to leave, but the door lock was sticky, prompting Zuniga Castro to get a knife from the kitchen and stab Trembley and his mother.
The mayhem charge stemmed from Trembley later losing his spleen in surgery due to the knife wound.
But Talley argued that Trembley was dealing drugs out of the house with his mother’s knowledge, and they took the defendant in quickly so he wouldn’t arouse the suspicions of neighbors and draw unwanted law enforcement attention to stolen goods in the house.
Talley said Trembley approached Zuniga Castro with a gun to try to cower him into submission, but Zuniga Castro felt threatened and acted in self-defense.
In his closing argument, Talley pointed to efforts he said prosecutors took to get Trembley released from jail on June 16 as motivation for him to lie about what happened. Court records show Trembley failed to follow through on an earlier DUI plea deal and, after admitting a probation violation, failed to report to jail for a 150-day sentence on Jan. 7, 2022.
Trembley landed back in jail in May of this year and was sentenced to 180 days in jail. He was released on June 16 when prosecutors asked a judge to release him so he could testify, according to court records.
Prosecutors denied arranging any deal for Trembley’s testimony.
Talley confronted Trembley with a long text message thread he had with a friend of Zuniga Castro’s that indicated he was willing to sell her drugs and get a ghost gun for her and warned of “consequences” if she told anyone.
“He didn’t know we had that text,” Talley told jurors in closing arguments.
When confronted with it, Trembley said, “That was altered,” according to Talley.
Prosecutors “cut a deal with this creep,” Talley said. “He’s supposed to be in jail until August.”
And if Trembley lied on the stand, then there would be no consequences, Talley argued.
“Honest to God, this is so bad,” Talley said. “This is wrong.”
Talley told jurors, “Those two alleged victims are liars.”