Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date: 09/08/2009

Contact person(s):

Media Coordinator, Terry Menshek - (707) 565-3098 Media Spokesperson, Chief Deputy District Attorney Spencer Brady

Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, California

FIRST DEGREE MURDER CONVICTIONS UPHELD ON APPEAL
OF 2005 MULTIPLE DEFENDANT GANG CASE

District Attorney Stephan Passalacqua announced today that the first degree murder convictions of four defendants tried in Sonoma County were affirmed on appeal September 3, 2009.  In a trial that took 8 months in 2005, the longest running trial to date in the county,  a Sonoma County jury convicted defendants Peter James Amante, Rogelio Javier Cardenas, Patrick George Higuera, Jr., and Rico Ricardo Lopez of first degree murder in connection with the stabbing death of Ignacio Medina Gomez. The jury also found that each of these four defendants intentionally killed the victim while an active participant in a criminal street gang and that the murder was carried out to further the activities of a criminal street gang.

The murder occurred on June 27, 2002, along the Santa Rosa Creek near Stony Point Road in Santa Rosa.  The trial was held before Superior Court Judge Raima Ballinger. 

The First District, California Court of Appeal agreed that the prosecution’s alternative theories of liability supported the defendants’ convictions.  Specifically, the court found substantial evidence of defendants’ participation in the attack on the victim supported their first degree murder convictions as actual perpetrators, even though there was no conclusive evidence as to which defendant delivered the fatal blow(s).  Further, it agreed with the prosecution that even if the issue of who delivered the fatal blow to the victim was not conclusively resolved by the evidence, the convictions were proper under either a straight aiding and abetting theory, or under the natural and probable consequences doctrine.
 
As a result of the appellate decision denying various claims of error in the court rulings and its admission of evidence, the sentences of three of the defendants, Amante, Higuera, and Lopez, remains at life in prison without the possibility of parole.  The fourth defendant, Cardenas, who was a minor at the time of the murder, received a thirty five years to life sentence originally.  The appellate court found that the gang enhancement on Cardenas’ twenty five years to life sentence did not call for an additional consecutive 10 year enhancement to the sentence as imposed, but rather called for an increased minimum eligible parole date.  It therefore modified Cardenas’ sentence to reflect a total sentence of 25 years to life, with a minimum eligible parole date of 15 years.

A fifth defendant whose conviction was not involved in this appeal, Mario Ochoa-Gonzalez, was found guilty of felony Accessory to Murder, along with a gang allegation. He was sentenced to serve seven years in state prison. 

Chief Deputy District Attorney Spencer Brady was the assigned prosecutor on the case. The Santa Rosa Police Department’s Violent Crimes Unit handled the investigation.