GUILTY CA - Brittany Killgore, 22, Fallbrook, 13 April 2012

DNA Solves
DNA Solves
DNA Solves
Jessica Lopez enters the courtroom at the Vista Courthouse on Nov. 19, 2015.

With the change in law, the theoretical getaway driver and the lookout can now petition to have their murder conviction vacated. Prosecutors would have to prove one of three theories to keep the murder conviction:
  • the defendant was the actual killer;
  • the defendant played a role and had the intent to kill — perhaps the driver knew or expected the clerk would be shot as part of the plan.
  • the defendant was a major player in the underlying felony and acted with reckless indifference to human life — perhaps the lookout supplied the gunman with the bullets.
The judge is now viewing Lopez’s case through the same lens.
Espinoza, the prosecutor, argued to the judge that Lopez acted with reckless indifference. He said her narrative of events after she returned from the grocery store — that she stayed upstairs, clueless — is not reasonable.

He argued that Lopez “knew what her co-defendants were all about. She was aware of the degree of violence her co-defendants inflicted on others.”

He noted that the jury convicted her of kidnapping and torture, and said the panel also “found she was a major participant” in the murder by finding true a special circumstance allegation (Lopez was not convicted at trial of conspiracy to commit kidnapping, as Perez and Maraglino were). He also pointed to her own writing about a violent abduction fantasy, a piece she wrote well before Killgore’s murder, as state-of-mind evidence.

“She is trying to avoid responsibility, blame others and point fingers at her co-defendants,” Espinoza said.

“She was willing to be cut, tattooed, eat out of bowls, even willing to kill herself,” Ostbye said. “She was so controlled and brainwashed, she did whatever she was told to do.”
 

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