Week 7: Santa Maria Ibarra Murder Trial

After a two day mid-week break, the trial resumed Thursday morning with more defense cross-examination of one of the two lead Santa Maria Police Detectives in the alleged kidnap, torture and murder of Anthony Ibarra in March of 2013.

Ibarra’s naked body was found in the back of a rented U-Haul truck abandoned in an Orcutt neighborhood, the prosecution says the motive for the crime was Ibarra’s unpaid drug debts to the defendants identified in court as gang members.

Defense attorneys questioned the detective about his interview with one of the key prosecution witnesses in the case in the immediate aftermath of Ibarra’s death that led to the arrest of the six defendants on trial.

The witness has testified he saw and heard Ibarra get attacked in the home he lived in on West Donovan Road on March 17, 2013 by the defendants.

The jury was shown a videotape of the detective’s interview.

Then in a surprise twist in how jury trials normally work, the judge told the jury that while the prosecution has not yet rest its case, both sides agreed to allow defense attorney Addison Steele to call two witnesses.

No explanation for the unusual, out of order proceeding was given in court.

The first defense witness called to the stand was a fellow gang member and prison parolee who testified he did not know any of the six defendants on trial.

“If I give you the date, March 17, 2013, does that mean anything to you?”, Steele asked his witness, “No, not at all”, he replied.

“Okay how about St. Patrick’s Day of 2013, or how about the day of the U-Haul case, does that mean anything to you?”, Steele asked the witness, “Just what I hear about in the news, that’s about it”, he replied.

The witness was asked he if ever saw a machete identified in court as one of the murder weapons in Ibarra’s death but never found by investigators.

“That one time that you saw him, did he havewith him a machete?”, Steele asked the witness, “I don’t think so”, he replied.

Another key witness in the trial, gang member Robert Sosa, one of eleven original defendants arrested in the Ibarra case who accepted a plea deal in exchange for testifying for the prosecution, has told the jury he removed a bloody machete from the crime scene and hid it underneath a shed in the backyard of another home.

“Do your remember if Mr. Sosa showed up at your mom’s place in a day in March?”, Steele asked the defense witness on the stand, “To be honest sir, I don’t really remember what date it was, you know, I remember seeing him one time and that was it”, he replied.

“Do you remember at any time Mr. Sosa getting in touch with you and asking you to go get a machete out from under that shed?” Steeled asked, “Not at all sir”, the witness said.

The defense witness was subpoenaed to testify but said he did not want to be in court, “I don’t want to get involved in nothing sir, especially this trial”, he said.

“During that brief time that you saw Sosa at yourmom’s, did you see him with a machete?”, defense attorney Michael Scott asked the witness, “no, sir”, he replied.

“Did Sosa ever call you, text you, speak with you in personand say would get a machete out from undera shed?”, Scott asked, “no sir”, the witness said.

“DidSosa ever talk to you at all about any kind of machete?”, Scott asked, “no sir”, he replied.

Under cross-examination by prosecutor Ann Bramsen, the defense witness admitted to be a member of Santa Maria’s Northwest street gang and the Surenos affiliate of the prison-run Mexican Mafia.

“You are a gang member?”, Bramsen asked the witness, “I guess”, he replied, “are you a member of Northwest?”, Bramsen asked, “I guess”, he said.

“Are there consequences if you become a rat or a snitch”, Bramsen asked the witness, “Pretty much”, he replied, “what kind of consequences?”, Bramsen asked, “I don’t know what kind, its not good”, he replied, “do you gethurt?”, Bramsen asked, “possibly, yes”, the witness testified.

The witness also testified about his lengthy criminal record and how he was sent to prison on more than one occasion for robbery, assault, a felon in possession of ammunition and parole violations.

The second defense witness called was a woman who testified about trying to move into a room she had rented at the home on West Donovan Road.

She said she tried to move in on the day of the alleged murder but was told by Robert Sosa to not go inside the home because it was “hot and the police were there”.

She testified she never saw any of the six defendants at the home, only Sosa and two other prosecution witnesses who lived at the home.

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Santa Maria’s ongoing U-Haul murder trial turned to the hypothetical on the first day of the seventh week of the trial.

The prosecution wanted to show the jury, hypothetically, the significance of the alleged kidnap, torture and murder of Anthony Ibarra to benefit a criminal street gang, a key component in its case against the six defendants who are identified as either members of, or associates of, the gang involved in this trial.

The prosecution says the motive for killing Ibarra was his unpaid drug debts to the gang

“The person fails to pay on more than one occasion for drugs fronted and is failing to pay taxes for drugs that he is selling”, says prosecutor Ann Bramsen laying out the hypothetical for the motive by the six defendants in luring 28 year old Anthony Ibarra to a Santa Maria home on West Donovan Road in March of 2013.

“They attacked the guy who owes money with hands and fists”, Bramsen told the jury, “both the brother and sister (who lived in the West Donovan Road home) can hear the person who owes money screaming and begging for them to stop and asking if he can explain.”

Witnesses have already testified to seeing and or hearing Anthony Ibarra in his final members before he died.

“The next day the shot caller along with a gang associate and the shot caller’s girlfriend who is a gang associate rent a U-Haul and take the body out of the house.”, Bramsen continues in her hypothetical to the jury.

One of the two lead Santa Maria Police Department Detectives on this case explains in response to Bramsen’s hypothetical how the killing of Ibarra benefits the alleged gang and gang members accused in the trial.

“The victim in the hypothetical is attacked and killed based on their breaking of the gang’s rules, that serves as a reminder to any other individuals out there what happens when you break the rules”, the unidentified SMPD Detectives testified, “it enforces that gang’s reputation, its how large groups of gang members can be controlled by small groups of individuals such as the Mexican Mafia.”

The detective also explained, hypothetically, how gang violence and influence is perpetuated in local communities.

“Terrify the community”, the SMPD Detective said, “allow gang members to commit other gang crimes with, not impunity, but with the ability to get away with them because people are terrified of coming forward, witnesses are terrified of coming forward, victims are terrified of coming forward, and the gang’s reputation cements that fear in the community and makes these crimes so hard to investigate, so hard to solve and so easy to get away with on behalf of the gang.”

Defense attorneys posed their own hypothetical scenarios to the jury including the possibility that one of many people identified by name in the trial so far, but not charged, also had motive and opportunity to kill Anthony Ibarra after he was initially beaten by the defendants in the Santa Maria home on March 17, 2013.