Phil_Shuman's Blog

I covered the sentencing for convicted Metrolink mass murderer Juan Alvarez in Criminal Courts. if you've never been to a trial or a verdict or a sentencing... you should go.... in case you didnt realize it, the courts are open to the public.... talk about drama... reality... emotion.  At any rate, the guy got life w/o parole rather than death.. which was a headline. But.. what didnt get reported very much, beyond the excellent Tony Castro of the Daily News.. is that according to three of the jurors who were brave enough to talk to the news media after it was over, they didn't believe Alvarez actually intended to kill anyone that morning.. rather, they thought he was just trying to create a spectacle.  Essentially they bought into the defense's theories.. even sympathizing w/ Alvarez's troubled upbringing. In fact, were it not for a legal technicality called the  "felony murder rule " they wouldn't have even convicted him of 1st degree murder and he would not have been eligible for the death penalty and would've been able to get parole at some theoretical point in the future.  The technicality was this.. in simple terms... because he was also found guilty of a felony... arson.. and in doing so people died.. he must automatically be found guilty of first degree murder.  I'm not a lawyer so if i'm not quite precise on this feel free to correct me.. but that's the deal... Jurors wouldve convicted him of the lesser crime of 2nd degree murder.. but they correctly followed the law and the judge's instructions which in essence required them to convict on 1st degree.   At any rate, after all that, to talk w/ the victims relatives who were hoping for the death penalty was quite interesting....they wanted Alvarez to die... can you blame them ?   Though to be honest, getting ''death'' in California really means life.. as there are no current death sentences even scheduled due to a dispute over lethal injections... and there are some 680 people on death row right now !

    On a side note, i happened to be sitting in the courtroom next to Deputy DA Alan Jackson and his boss Pat Dixon who you may recall prosecuted Phil Spector to a hung jury ( ridiculous) and will soon be trying them again. Yes even veteran prosecutors want to be in court for the big moments even though they've lived through enough of their own.  I couldn't help but wonder what Spectors money and attorneys would have been able to manufacture if they had Alvarez for a client.  His public defenders didnt do half bad w/ what they had.