A defense attorney in a death penalty case brought against a 26-year-old Vallejo man charged with three killings in late 2014 and early 2015 said the Solano County District Attorney’s Office is “not the gatekeeper” when it comes to providing the defense relevant information and evidence for a proposed discovery motion.
Speaking during the Wednesday afternoon session in Department 7 in Vallejo, attorney Thomas Kensok of Napa told Superior Court Judge Tim P. Kam that the state Legislature settled the issue in 2020 with the passage of AB 2542, which added Section 745 to the Penal Code, declaring that sentencing on the basis of race, ethnicity or national origin is unlawful.
But the defense must first prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the defendant was charged or convicted of a more serious offense than defendants of other races, ethnicities or national origins who commit similar offenses, and that the evidence shows prosecutors more often sought or obtained convictions for more serious offenses against people who share the defendant’s race, ethnicity, or national origin.
Kensok, who along with Martinez-based attorney Jon C. Weir, represents Lorenzo Mateo Cortez, told Kam that he needs to make a case for his client not with largely state data but with a “statistical sample in Solano County.”
Getting “raw data” to actually file a formal motion in court is necessary, added Kensok, who on Monday submitted a nearly 80-page rebuttal in response to the prosecution’s opposition to the data request, noting in his filing that Cortez is a mixed-race man, “born to a black mother and a Latino father.”
In response, Deputy District Attorney Mark Ornellas, who is assisting the lead prosecutor, Senior Deputy District Attorney Julie Underwood, told Judge Kam that the defense had not established “cause” in its filing and that the three victims were racial minorities.
However, Kam accepted Kensok’s argument and issued three orders: 1) The DA’s Office must provide defendants’ race information in murder cases filed between Jan. 1, 2011, and Feb. 16, 2022; arrest and detention forms about the facts of the cases; and 3) information on the race of the victims during the 10-year span.
Kam then questioned the attorneys about jury selection for the trial, currently set for March 22 in the Justice Building in Vallejo. He also asked if jury selection would begin “with death penalty qualifications,” that is, questions about the fitness of jurors to serve on the case, depending on their views about capital punishment.
Jury summons would “go out” on March 29, said Kam.
Cortez who sat at the defense table, had told Kam weeks ago that he no longer wished to represent himself.
During that Feb. 2 hearing, Kam acknowledged he had received from the defense attorneys a Pitchess motion, a motion to sever each of the three murder counts and conduct separate trials for each, and a discovery motion.
The motion to sever, the Pitchess motion and a trial management conference is set for 1:30 p.m. March 2; another trial management conference at 1:30 p.m. March 14; and the jury trial at 8:30 a.m. March 22.
Cortez is charged with the Nov. 3, 2014, murder of Isaac Lopez-Reid, 18; the Dec. 20, 2014, murder of Luis Perez, 18; and the Jan. 10, 2015, murder of William Brown, 20. All were shot in Vallejo.
Vallejo police investigators, who arrested Cortez on March 2, 2015, while he was in Solano County Jail on unrelated felonies, believe Cortez shot the first victim because Lopez-Reid had accused him of being “a snitch.” Investigators also believe the fatal shootings of Perez and Brown were execution-style killings, with both victims robbed of money and their belongings. Cortez was 19 when he committed the alleged crimes.
He remains in custody without bail on the murder charges in the Stanton Correctional Facility in Fairfield.
Court records also show that there were, at one time, two co-defendants in the case, Jeman D. Baker and John Kevin Johnson, but it appears their cases have been dismissed.
Kensok has explained the motion to sever meant that, if permitted, Cortez would be tried on the three counts by three separate juries. Should a jury find Cortez guilty of, say, a special circumstance, such as shooting from a vehicle in the first count, a jury could impose the death penalty.