For several convicted killers, the horrific case of Seal Beach mass murderer Scott Evans Dekraai is a potential legal gift.
Last month, a Superior Court ruled that Dekraai — who admitted to killing eight people at a hair salon in 2011 — should not receive the death penalty because of misconduct on the part of local prosecutors and the sheriff’s department. Instead, the worst mass murderer in county history is expected to be sentenced to eight terms of life without the possibility of parole.
But the problems unearthed in the case weren’t limited to Dekraai.
State and appellate judges looking at Dekraai have ruled that Orange County prosecutors, sheriff’s deputies and police detectives cheated over the course of several years by secretly using jailhouse informants to cajole inmates into incriminating themselves — a constitutional violation because the targeted inmates were represented by attorneys. The courts also ruled that informants’ histories often were withheld from defense teams, another violation.
For others convicted of murder, those problems look like daylight.
Attorneys for at least five men now in prison for murders committed in Orange County are using findings from the Dekraai case in attempts to win new trials.
The crimes are lurid and it’s far from a given that their arguments will be met with legal favor, but the Dekraai case could offer new ammunition.
Here are those cases:
Ricardo Salas
Ricky Salas was just out of high school with a 3.2 grade point average, when Santa Ana police grabbed him in November 2005 for a fatal gang shooting that took place three years earlier. Salas has been locked up ever since and is now serving a life sentence without parole in state prison.
His best shot at freedom comes from the same jailhouse informant who helped convince a jury to convict him of murder. Drug addict Landon Horning told the jury that Salas had made incriminating statements while the two shared a cell at Orange County jail — statements that corroborated the testimony of Salas’ alleged accomplice.
What Horning allegedly didn’t tell the jury — and what prosecutor Alison Gyves allegedly didn’t tell the defense team — was that Horning was a hallucinating schizophrenic with brain damage and an addiction to heroin. Another secret: Horning had been placed purposely in Salas’ cell to obtain a confession in the shooting death of 24-year-old Pedro “Tiger” Martin in Santa Ana. If true, that would violate Salas’ right to legal counsel because he had an attorney at the time.
Based on those claims, Salas’ lawyer, Tarik Adlai, has taken the case back to Orange County Superior Court, trying to get the conviction overturned.
“Ricky Salas was sentenced to death in prison for a crime committed three weeks after his 18th birthday based on two presumptively unreliable witnesses: a rewarded turncoat accomplice and a rewarded jailhouse informer,” Adlai wrote in a court motion. “Evidence not disclosed to the jury confirmed that both were not only presumptively unreliable but both affirmatively lied to the jury that convicted Salas.”
Informant Horning told the jury that he was on probation for using cocaine, when he really was on probation for using heroin. He said he was taking anti-inflammatory medication, not the anti-psychotics that he was actually taking.
Horning, who was in jail for repeatedly violating his probation, was let out of jail early at the behest of the district attorney’s office and moved to Northern California, ostensibly for his safety. Adlai argues in court papers that prosecutors were trying to stash Horning away, so the defense team couldn’t find and question him.
Salas’ alleged accomplice, Jesse Madrigal, received a five-year sentence after testifying against the defendant. For his part, Madrigal admitted to driving the Chevrolet El Camino from which the fatal shot was fired.
The district attorney’s office would not comment on the merits of the case, saying only that it was pending. In a past interview, prosecutors said they gave the defense all the information they had at the time.
Paul Gentile Smith
Drops of blood found at a murder scene in 1988 sealed Paul Smith’s fate.
More than 20 years after the killing, Smith was arrested in Las Vegas, after his DNA profile matched the genetic material in the blood drops. Police had taken a sample from Smith after an unrelated arrest for domestic violence.
A jury in November 2010 found Smith guilty of stabbing marijuana dealer Robert Haugen’s nude body 18 times — nearly decapitating the victim — and torching his remains in a Sunset Beach bedroom.
Smith argued that he did not kill Haugen, a childhood friend and Smith’s pot supplier.
Smith explained that at the time of the crime, he carried a Swiss Army knife. He said he must have cut himself while using the knife’s small scissors to trim high-grade marijuana at Haugen’s home the day before the killing.
In the jail, Smith was placed by deputies in Mod-L20, a cell since shown to have been used routinely to match suspects with jailhouse informants. Smith was near an informant, Arthur Palacios, and at least two other unnamed informants. Though prosecutors told Smith’s defense lawyer about Palacios, they never disclosed the other informants.
Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders wrote in the Dekraai case that prosecutors didn’t mention the other snitches because the revelation would have exposed a network of informants in the jail.
Palacios testified that Smith confessed the murder to him, helping to win a conviction.
Jurors also heard evidence that Smith tried to burn his girlfriend with a lighter and tortured her with a knife, in one incident, stabbing her in the leg. On another occasion, Smith tied her nude body to the bed, proclaiming: “Let the torture begin,” according to court documents. News accounts say Smith and the woman were involved in a sado-masochistic relationship.
Smith, court documents say, also attempted to hire a hit man from within the jail to attack a sheriff’s investigator working on the case.
As compelling as the evidence may be, Smith’s conviction could be overturned if the court finds his constitutional rights were violated.
Six years after the trial, during evidentiary hearings connected to Dekraai, the court learned that sheriffs deputies inside the jail kept a special online log detailing the interactions between deputies and informants. That log contained information on Palacios, information that prosecutors acknowledged should have been given to Smith’s defense. The information could have been used to attack the informant’s credibility on the witness stand.
The use of the informant may also have violated Smith’s right to counsel, since he had legal representation and was formally charged at the time. Prosecutors instructed Palacios not to ask any questions of Smith, but he ended up doing so, according to court documents.
“They’re pretty straightforward violations,” said Smith’s attorney, Jerome Wallingford.
He said the Dekraai ruling by Judge Thomas Goethals gives him hope that such decisions will be made according to the law and not according to sentiment.
“It certainly shows an indication on the part of the court to take these accusations very seriously,” Wallingford said.
The district attorney’s office is scheduled to reply to Wallingford’s arguments by mid-September.
Stanley Simon
On a chilly night in March 2006, members of the Rollin’ 20s street gang left Long Beach to go dancing at an Anaheim night spot, Club Boogie. Inside the club, they noticed some other partiers were wearing snappy clothes and flashy jewelry.
The “bling” again stood out when the Rollin’ 20s ran into that same group at a nearby Denny’s. The gang allegedly decided to steal the jewelry.
A fight broke out inside the restaurant and spilled into the parking lot. Shots were fired. Armand Jones, an 18-year-old actor who would posthumously become known for his role in the 2007 movie “Freedom Writers,” was killed in the shoot-out by a single bullet through the heart.
Jones, aglitter in gold chains, a gold watch, diamond studded earrings and other expensive jewelry, was celebrating the last day of filming.
Stanley Simon was one of four people arrested in the killing. In police interviews, Simon denied shooting Jones or participating in the brawl.
But prosecutors said in court that Simon became loose-lipped when put together in jail with informant Jeremiah Rodriguez, who at the time stood accused of four counts of attempted murder in an unrelated case.
Simon didn’t know that Rodriguez was taking notes of their alleged conversations.
Rodriguez told police that Simon admitted shooting one of the surviving victims in the back of the head with a snub-nosed 38-caliber gun.
Simon denied on the witness stand talking to informant Rodriguez. He said he didn’t trust Rodriquez and didn’t tell him anything.
Simon’s attorney James Crawford said in a recent filing that authorities withheld evidence concerning informant Rodriquez. It wasn’t until February 2017 — six years after Simon’s conviction — that Crawford learned Rodriguez had a long history as a jailhouse informant.
Crawford argues that informant Rodriguez and co-defendant Damon Hill were sent by police to illegally interrogate Simon, who was allegedly denied his right to counsel, a violation because he had legal representation and was formally charged.
Rodriguez who was looking at a possible sentence of life without parole was allowed to plead guilty with a 4-year-sentence after testifying, according to court documents.
Simon was sentenced in 2011 to life without parole by Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals, the same judge who presided over the Dekraai case.
The DA’s office said on August 31 that it did not have time to respond to questions about the Simon case.
Ramon Alvarez
The call on the police radio was “suspicious circumstances,” but that did little to describe the horror awaiting Santa Ana officers in June of 1998, when they went to the house on South Hallady Street.
In a backyard shed, they found a body covered with bags of ice in a children’s inflatable swimming pool. The victim’s head had been blown away by a single high-caliber gunshot. Nearby were plastic bags filled with dirt and brain matter.
A crucifix lay atop the body of gang member Ruben Leal, known in the neighborhood as “Oso.”
The backyard hose was still running.
Fellow gang member Ramon Alvarez was among the people in the house. He said he had arrived about 20 minutes before the police and hadn’t noticed the body in the shed, even as he went outside to smoke a cigarette.
Later that month, Alvarez was at the Santa Ana city jail with inmate Craig Gonzales, who knew the defendant from a previous stint in prison.
Gonzales told police in 2010 that Alvarez confessed to the killing and gave details not released to the public.
Alvarez was convicted in 2012 and sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. He recently filed documents in federal court seeking a new trial on the grounds that Gonzales lied on the witness stand.
Gonzales testified that he never before worked with prosecutors, but Alvarez said the informant worked with prosecutors on a sexual assault case in Nevada in 2002 in exchange for a suspended sentence. The information wasn’t disclosed to Alvarez’ lawyer at the time of the trial, though appellate documents show the prosecutors didn’t know either.
Secondly, wrote Alvarez, Gonzales questioned him in violation of his civil rights. Alvarez said the informant was moved near his cell while he was reviewing discovery information.
Alvarez, who wrote his own motion by hand, cited the Dekraai case and the use by police and prosecutors of a secret network of jailhouse informants.
An appellate court has upheld Alvarez’s sentence and the state supreme court refused to review the case.
The state attorney general, which is arguing the case against Alvarez, says that while Gonzales may have been evasive in his testimony, that’s not the same as perjury. The state also points out that while Alvarez has cited the Dekraai case — in which an informant was improperly used — he has provided no proof that it happened in his case.
William Charles Payton
The last thing inmate William Payton expected was that the guy with the Bible in the cell next door was an informant working for the district attorney.
Accused of murder, Payton opened up to jail neighbor Daniel Escalera, who disarmed him with talks about the Lord before turning the subject to murder.
Escalera became a key witness in Payton’s 1982 penalty trial, which ended with the defendant being sent to Death Row. Today, Payton is next in line from Orange County to be executed, should the penalty resume.
Escalera testified that Payton confessed to having a “severe problem” with women and sex. That testimony helped sway a jury deliberating in the 1980 rape and stabbing death of Garden Grove resident Pamela Montgomery.
Attorney’s for Payton, motivated by findings in Dekraai, say the prosecutor in the Payton case, Michael Jacobs, was untruthful in a 1999 deposition in which he said Escalera and another informant were not agents of the government.
Jacobs, in a past interview, denied any misconduct and said he testified to the best of his knowledge.
If the misconduct is true, it would mean that the informant program uncovered by assistant public defender Sanders stretched back more than three decades.
From the beginning, the facts of the case worked against Payton. He was convicted of killing Montgomery, stabbing the 21-year-old woman a dozen times. Payton also was convicted of trying to murder two others: Patricia Pensinger, who survived 40 stab wounds, and Pensinger’s 10-year-old son, Blaine, who was stabbed 23 times.
The key question was whether Payton would be sentenced to death.
He was with the help of the informants.