Was Justice Done in the Matthew Turner Case?

By David Fonseca

This past May, the Second Appellate District Court of California denied a motion for a new trial filed by the defense team for Matthew Turner, the 21-year-old Highland Park resident convicted of killing one local gang member and maiming another in October 2008. 

The court found no merit in numerous arguments submitted by Turner's team, which range from from allegations of witness coercion by detectives in the Los Angeles Police Department's Northeast Division to failure to disclose witness inducement by county prosecutors. 

On June 12, Turner's attorney Christopher Darden submitted a request for review to the California Supreme Court. 

Turner is currently serving a 90-year sentence for the murder of 16-year-old Adrian Betancor and attempted killing of 19-year-old Joey Chavez. 

According to police reports, Betancor was was walking alongside Chavez and his 17-year-old girlfriend Stephanie Renteria on Avenue 58 near North Figueroa Street on the day of the shooting. 

About 25 feet behind them were Juan Velasquez, 17, his girlfriend Adriana and their infant daughter. Also in the rear group were Samantha Renteria and her two children. Chavez would later testify in court that he liked to keep a safe distance from his children while walking in Highland Park, should he ever be targeted for his gang affiliation. 

Chavez's fears were justified on that day. He and Betancor were stopped and called out by the driver and passenger of a white Chevy Impala. According to Chavez's testimony, the car's passenger asked him and Betancor where they were from. Chavez and Betancor understood that this question was meant to determine their gang affiliation. 

According to the police report, Chavez told the men in the car that he repped South Side Ghetto Boys, a gang with no local affiliation. Betancor said he was a member of "OCK."

Police allege that Turner, a documented affiliate of the local Avenues gang, opened fire upon hearing Betancor say he was a member of the rival tagging crew. 

Moments later, Betancor would be bleeding to death in a nearby parking lot for giving the "wrong" answer. Chavez would eventually lose his right eye as a result of his wounds. 

LAPD Northeast Division Det. Harold Dicroce said that Turner was motivated by the killing of Avenues gang member Alfredo Avila. 

"Revenge," Dicroce said. "That's what I believe is the motive for the killing."

The Conviction 

Matthew was convicted in August 2010 at the end of the second trial conducted for the Betancor murder, which was held after the jury in the first trial failed to return with a verdict following the initial proceedings. An evidentiary hearing for a new trial was held in January 2011. Matthew was denied a retrial and sentenced the following summer. 

Leads were slow to develop in the case. Stephanie Renteria was interviewed shortly after the shooting, at which time she told police that the killer was a local gang member who used the moniker "Fatal."  Renteria was called in to provide a description to a sketch artist. 

During that time, Renteria did not describe the shooter as having any distinctive marks on his face. For Matthew Turner's father Wayne, this is one of the most critical aspects of the investigation—because his son has a prominent mole on his upper lip. 

It wasn't until March 2009 that a Highland Park resident named Johnny Robles named Matthew as the shooter—telling officers that a guy named "Snoop or "Snoopy did it." Matthew went by those nicknames while he was a student at Luther Burbank Middle School. 

Robles was being investigated by police in connection with a car theft at the time he fingered Matthew Turner. 

In June 2009, seven months after she named another local gang member as the killer and failed to mention Matthew's distinctive mole during a sketch session, Renteria picked Matthew out of a photo lineup. 

The identification would become a cornerstone of LAPD's investigation, and would lead to Matthew Turner's arrest two months later. 

For Turner's defense team, the Renteria interview was LAPD at its worst—a clear example of a police force determined to single out a suspect, regardless of the facts. 

Deck Stacked Against Defense?

In the motion for retrial, Darden argued that Matthew was by far the youngest person in the photo lineup, causing him to stick out among the other potential suspects. 

In the videotaped interview of Renteria, she says Matthew looks similar to the shooter, to which DiCroce responded, "similar is not good enough." DiCroce would then prompt Renteria to say that Matthew looks "exactly" like the shooter. 

When asked about his exchange with Renteria, Dicroce said he was not attempting to persuade her—only to help her better understand the vocabulary used by police. 

"I would say she was probably 15 at the time," Dicroce said. "She was street smart, but when it came to school, she was really behind. She didn't know what 'distinct' meant—I had to explain it to her." 

During that same interview, Renteria would be caught on camera taking a picture of Turner and saving it on her cell phone. Although DiCroce would confront her about this and delete the photo, she later testified that she had planned to send the photo to her sister, who was scheduled to look at a photo lineup directly after her. 

A month later, Renteria attended another live lineup, where she again identified Matthew Turner. She would testify that she had the picture of Matthew she took during the previous interview with Dicroce in her head while making the identification. 

During the motion for the retrial, Darden again argued that the deck was stacked against Matthew because he was by far the youngest person in the live lineup. 

In denying the Turner team's motion for a new trial, the court argued that neither the photographic lineup nor live lineup was unduly suggestive. 

"Turner does not stand out as the youngest individual," the court stated in its official response. "Further, all of the photographs depict males with a medium build and closely cropped, dark-colored hair, with the same approximate skin tone. Each of the individuals has a similar facial expression and all of the photographs are in color and were taken against a neutral background."

The response further states that although Turner was the only suspect with a mole on his face, other potential suspects had "facial marks" as well. 

On August 5, 2009, several days before Matthew was arrested, Chavez attended a live lineup with LAPD Det. José Carillo. Chavez was unable to identify Matthew and mentioned that the shooter had a goatee. Nevertheless, Carillo would later testify that Chavez stated he recognized Matthew while walking back to his car after the live lineup. That testimony was allowed to stand. 

The Second Trial

Matthew Turner's second trial began on June 22, 2010. 

In an appeals brief submitted after the motion for retrial was denied, Darden argued that attorney Arline Binder made several critical errors in a defense of Matthew that bordered on negligent. 

Darden argued that Binder's greatest error came in failing to cross-examine a witness named Ernest Olguin, who owned a tattoo shop near the crime scene. 

Olguin initially testified that he had gotten "a good look" at the Turner, but that confidence faded during the second trial. 

Guillemina Lopez, Matthew's mother, claims to have overheard Olguin tell LAPD Det. Lisa Governo that Matthew was "not the guy" upon seeing him entering the court during the second trial. 

Lopez would relay this information to Binder after Olguin finished testifying. Darden argues that Binder made a clear tactical error in failing to call Olguin back to the stand to question him on this matter. 

In the motion for the retrial, Governo testified that she "couldn't say that he didn't say that" when asked about Olguin's statements. She also admitted to not telling the defense counsel about Olguin's statement until after the second trial. 

Darden's motion for appeal calls out several other errors made by Binder, such as failing to strike the testimony of a man named Alfred Vilchis, who was with Olguin on the day of the shooting. 

According to Darden, Vilchis was unable to describe the shooter in an immediate followup interview. Two years after the shooting, Vilchis failed to pick Matthew out of a photo six pack. 

Vilchis was nevertheless allowed to identify Matthew as the shooter in court during the second trial. 

Asked about the validity of Vilchis' identification, Dicroce said he was more apt to trust an identification made in person compared with one made in a photo lineup. 

Binder is also taken to task in the Darden's appeal for failing to suppress Renteria's identification despite evidence that it had been coerced. 

In the responding the motion for a new trial, the Attorney General's office argues that what Darden characterizes as inadequate counsel was in fact a product Binder's strategy to expose inconsistencies in LAPD's investigation. 

"The respondent submits that counsel represented appellant skillfully by exploiting the variances within and among the witnesses identifications of appellant," the Attorney General's office wrote in its official response to Darden's appeal. 

The Attorney General's response further states that Binder's failure to cross-examine Olguin is overstated as a tactical error, noting Olguin admitted in court he could not identify the shooter. 

Regarding the Vilchis' and Renteria's identifications, the Attorney General's office argued that Binder made the tactical choice to "flood the jury with discrepancies." 

Instead of arguing about the legitimacy of Renteria's identification, the attorney general's office instead argued that allowing the identifications to be heard in court was a tactical decision meant to discredit the strength of the prosecution's case. 

"The respondent submits that because Renteria's various identifications were so inconsistent, counsel's sound strategy was to flood the jury with the discrepancies," the response states. 

The Attorney General's response also points out that Vilchis was the subject of a withering cross examination at the hands of Binder. 

"Counsel was granted extra time before cross examination of Vilchis, and pointed out that only after speaking with the investigating officer was he able to come back in and make an identification," the response states. "Counsel's tactical decision to respond to Vilchis' testimony on cross examination and in argument, rather than by a future objection, in front of the jury, was reasonable and sound. It's the jury's function, not the court's, to determine the sufficiency of an in-court identification." 

Darden said the immense weight given to witness identifications in the second trial was reason enough to overturn the conviction. 

And yet there was a glaring “failure of any witness to describe a mole on the face of the shooter," Darden said. "There’s the fact that, until the mole is introduced to the witness, no witness has any recollection of it. There is no forensic evidence, tying Matthew to the suspect vehicle or murder weapon. Part of the problem with identification cases is that when you have detectives with a vested interest in the outcome of the case or specific theories about who did it, they become biased, and they tend to do things, either consciously or sub-consciously, to make a case. And I think that's part of the problem here."

LAPD Capt. Murphy 'Comfortable With the Investigation'

Former LAPD Northeast Division Capt. William Murhpy said he was confident in the investigation that was conducted under his watch. 

“The prosecution had to get 12 people to agree and ultimately, they did,” Murphy said, adding that he didn't consider any of the complaints made by the Turner team valid. 

“They’re just throwing out anything they can,” Murphy said. 

When asked to address the discrepancies in the identifications made by Vilchis, Chavez, Renteria and Olguin, Murphy said those were issues for the court to address. 

“If there were disputes in the identifications, those would come up in trial,” Murphy said. 

Asked if the LAPD had ever pursued “Fatal,” the local gang member named by Renteria on the day of the shooting, Murphy said “if we were told of anybody else, we would have pursued it.” 

(According to LAPD Det. Dicroce, the department "exhausted all the leads," including the Fatal lead. "Fatal was put in a photo six-pack and nobody identified him," Dicroce said.) 

Murphy said that when presented with the totality of the evidence, he believed LAPD did its job in arresting Matthew Turner. 

“I’m very comfortable with the investigation,” he said. “I believe justice was served.”