The California Supreme Court on Thursday overturned the death sentence of a man who wrote then-Los Angeles County District Attorney Gil Garcetti a letter in which he called two murder victims “cowards” who “deserved what they got.”
In a 67-page ruling, the state’s highest court upheld Tommy Adrian Trujeque’s first-degree murder conviction for the June 21, 1986, stabbing of his cousin’s boyfriend, Max Facundo, in South Gate, but reversed his second- degree murder conviction for the Jan. 23, 1987, stabbing of Raul Luis Apodaca at an East Los Angeles upholstery shop.
In an opinion written by Associate Justice Ming W. Chin, the panel unanimously found that Trujeque was “improperly charged and subsequently convicted of Apodaca’s murder” after the case against him was dismissed twice according to the government and three times according to the defense. The panel also set aside the special circumstance findings that Trujeque committed multiple murders and had a prior second-degree murder conviction.
The Supreme Court justices ruled that Trujeque’s prior murder conviction from 1971 for the killing of Allen Rothenberg — in which the defendant was 16 at the time of the crime — was obtained in adult court “in violation of the double jeopardy clause” after he admitted an involuntary manslaughter charge in a juvenile court.
Trujeque was charged with the killings of Facundo and Apodaca after he spoke with investigators while in custody in San Diego County more than 10 years after the killings.
In a 1998 letter that was sent to Garcetti, the defendant “admitted he murdered both Apodaca and Facundo while ‘fully aware of all my mental faculties”‘ and urged the prosecution to seek the death penalty against him.
The justices noted that Trujeque’s letter also stated that “both of those cowards deserved what they got: death and an early expiration in life, to say the least!” and that if he “had the opportunity to do it over I would cut off their heads and send ’em both to their family!”
— City News Service