SAN JOSE — A prosecutor Tuesday urged the jury that convicted Antolin Garcia-Torres last week of killing missing Morgan Hill teen Sierra LaMar and attacking three other women to recommend the death penalty.
“This part of the trial is about justice,” deputy district attorney David Boyd told the jury in Santa Clara County Superior Court. “What is the one just verdict that answers for the unspeakable things the defendant did to her? … Death is the only fair and just verdict.”
Garcia-Torres’ attorney Brian Matthews, however, urged jurors to reach a “reasoned, moral” decision.
“This time you will consider not just the information, but also the man,” Matthews said. “His life is in your hands.”
Last week, the jury convicted Garcia-Torres, 26, of kidnapping and killing 15-year-old Sierra, who was on her way to her school bus stop in a rural community north of Morgan Hill when she vanished five years ago. Her body has not been found despite searches by more than 750 volunteers from around the Bay Area.
The jury, which reached a verdict in two days after a three-month trial, also convicted Garcia-Torres of attempting to kidnap three other women from Safeway parking lots in Morgan Hill in 2009.
Matthews urged jurors to consider that Garcia-Torres’ mother married his father when she was just 13, that he lived his early childhood in a shack on a field where his parents picked strawberries. Garcia-Torres’ father, Matthews said, drank all the time, yelled at his mother, beat her and choked her with her own waist-length long dark hair.
Garcia-Torres’ older brother, a substance abuser whom Garcia-Torres looked up to and tried to help, ended up being deported and dying in Mexico.
Despite his rough upbringing, Garcia-Torres cared for and was protective of his sisters, and when he got his girlfriend pregnant, stayed with her and was a good parent, Matthews said.
“The evidence will show you that Antolin’s life has value even after the guilty verdict and should not be extinguished,” Matthews said. “A life sentence can be fair and just, and it can be more appropriate.”
More than 20 people may testify for the prosecution about the sorrowful impact of Sierra’s death, including Sierra’s family, many friends and a teacher. Boyd also said the three women whom Garcia-Torres tried to kidnap will take the stand to tell the jury about the terror Garcia-Torres inspired.
The first friend testifying for the prosecution was Tatianna Isom-Horry, 19, who was on Sierra’s cheerleading team. She wept as she recalled the day her friend vanished, saying she text-messaged Sierra repeatedly that evening, thinking reports of her disappearance must be a cruel joke.
“She was just a genuinely nice person,” Isom-Horry said. “She was a ray of sunshine.”
She said that since then, she’s been on edge.
“You don’t feel safe anywhere you go,” Isom-Horry testified.
At one point Tuesday morning while the jury was outside the courtroom, defense attorney Al Lopez asked the judge to allow Garcia-Torres to sit in a regular chair, not the weighted chair he was using, which was uncomfortable. Weighted chairs are a security precaution used in some cases because they are too heavy to easily pick up and throw at someone, or push back and stand up. With four armed deputies in court, the judge granted the request for a better chair.
Toward the end of the afternoon session, a deputy sheriff testified that he saw Garcia-Torres dump something in a garbage can on his way to court in April. It was a knotted sandwich bag about 10-12 inches long that had been shaped into a garrote-like device.
“It had the characteristics of what I considered to be a dangerous weapon,” Deputy Tony Chang testified, adding that it was knotted as a noose at one end and looked like a “strangulation device.”
It was unclear whether Garcia-Torres could have intended to use the 10-12 inch bag to hang himself, or to hurt someone else.
Defense attorney Brian Matthews noted that Garcia-Torres was alone in the holding cell at the Hall of Justice for two hours or more.
Matthews said: “It could just be someone who is bored, right?”
