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Smuggler's 2nd trial in fatal crash under way

3 illegal immigrants died in '03; convictions tossed

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060419/news_2m19sanchez.html

By Jose Luis Jiménez
STAFF WRITER

April 19, 2006

VISTA – Amid a national debate over immigration, an admitted smuggler of immigrants is being tried a second time on charges stemming from the deaths of illegal immigrants.

The trial of Antonio Sanchez, 40, started yesterday in Superior Court. Sanchez faces three counts of second-degree murder because three immigrants he brought into the country from Mexico died in a crash after crossing near El Centro.

Sanchez, a Mexican citizen, was driving a Ford LTD with five passengers when he sped away from a California Highway Patrol officer June 26, 2003, on state Route 78 near Borrego Springs, slid into oncoming traffic and was broadsided by another car.

Mario Pérez Ortega, Leonardo Sánchez Placido and Erendira Jiménez García were killed in the crash.

In March 2004, Sanchez was convicted of three counts of second-degree murder by a Vista jury, which found the deaths came as Sanchez committed an inherently dangerous felony by fleeing the CHP. Two months later, he was sentenced to 53 years to life in prison.

State law allows a defendant to be convicted of murder if someone dies while the defendant is committing an inherently dangerous act that can endanger lives.

But in January 2005, the state Supreme Court ruled that a murder conviction cannot be based on the inherently dangerous act of fleeing a police officer because it is only a violation of the state vehicle code.

Eight months later, a local appellate court reversed Sanchez's convictions based on the higher court's decision.

The District Attorney's Office refiled the charges under the “implied malice” theory, which means Sanchez should have known that fleeing the CHP at high speed on a two-lane road could lead to someone's death.

Prosecutor Anthony Campagna focused on the facts of the accident during his opening statement yesterday. Sanchez was traveling east on the road when CHP Officer Chad Patton, driving in the opposite direction, saw a pickup truck cross the double yellow line to pass a tractor-trailer, the prosecutor told the jury.

Patton made a U-turn, turned on his lights and siren and was going to stop the pickup when Sanchez cut in front of him and started speeding away, Campagna told the jury. He said Sanchez reached speeds of 88 mph, and that no one in the vehicle was wearing a seat belt.

It was not the first time Sanchez had been caught smuggling illegal immigrants: In March 2000, he was chased and stopped by the Border Patrol with a van full of immigrants near Calexico.

“(Sanchez) is a coyote,” Campagna told the jury, using the slang term for an immigrant smuggler. “(Sanchez) moved over into oncoming traffic over a double yellow line and took off.”

Deputy Public Defender Sloan Ostbye told jurors that her client was a facilitator for five people who understood they were sneaking into the country illegally.

The day of the crash, Patton was driving a sport utility vehicle that Sanchez and the others in the car mistook for a Border Patrol vehicle, Ostbye told the jury.

When Sanchez ran from the officer, no one in the vehicle asked him to stop, and the chase lasted less than two minutes, the lawyer told jurors.

“The chase involved somebody who panicked,” Ostbye told the jury, referring to her client.

She asked jurors to set aside their feelings about illegal immigration and focus on the facts of the case.

“Whether you agree with illegal immigration or not is not the issue,” Ostbye told the jury. “The question is, are they victims of murder or not?”