“L-I-E-S”: Closing arguments drag on to second day in Sosa murder case

EPHRATA — Closing arguments were made Tuesday in the trial of Gustavo Tapia Rodriguez and Fernando Marcos Gutierrez, who stand accused of the Dec. 2016 kidnapping and murder of Othello-resident Arturo Sosa.

According to prosecutors, four people, including the co-defendants, tailed Sosa and roommate Jose Rafael Cano Barrientos before pulling them over, kidnapping them and murdering Sosa in an ensuing struggle.

In closing arguments, Deputy Prosecutor Kevin McCrae told a story of his time as a flight officer in the Navy, noting that flight sensors in military jets are redundant. Pilots can’t trust their life on one or two iterations of the same sensor, he said, but need three to be able to hedge against a faulty reading from any one.

He urged the jury to look at the redundancy of the evidence, saying that even if some aspects of their case are uncertain or insufficient, together they painted a clear picture.

In the first few days of September, the state alleged, Sosa’s ex-wife Eustolia Campuzano had moved out of their shared house and moved in with a friend, Paula Rodriguez Cuevas. Campuzano allegedly complained to Cuevas that Sosa had been seeing another woman, which is when prosecutors say Cuevas introduced her to Tapia Rodriguez and his companions.

Campuzano previously testified in court that she had asked the men to “scare” Sosa, before the kidnapping went horribly wrong. On the morning of Dec. 6, Sosa and Barrientos were pulled over by a pursuing Yukon flashing its headlights.

While Marcos Gutierrez and Campuzano remained inside the Yukon, Tapia Rodriguez and material witness Julio Ceasar Albarran Varona got out, pulled the victims from their vehicle, stuffed them in the backseat, and kidnapped them, the state alleged.

Prosecutors allege that as Albarran Varona drove and Tapia Rodriguez watched the kidnapped men in the backseat, a struggle ensued, during which that Albarran Varona shot Barrientos in the chest and Tapia Rodriguez shot Sosa in the head.

Sosa was killed just weeks before Quincy-mother of four Jill Sundberg, whose execution-style murder drew widespread attention in the middle of a fraught national conversation about the perceived dangers of illegal immigration. Tapia Rodriguez was convicted of kidnapping and murder in that case and is currently serving a life sentence.

Sundberg was murdered a year after the death of Kathryn Steinle on a San Francisco pier and two years before the death sentence conviction of California cop killer Luis Bracamontes, both referenced by President Donald Trump on the campaign trail before and after his election.

In that political climate, the case of Tapia Rodriguez and his small band of self-proclaimed cartel members became part of the national dialogue. The story was told and retold in all manner of right-wing media, ranging from the mainstream of Fox News to the far-right, neo-nazi blog The Daily Stormer, as evidence of the threat posed by illegal immigrants to citizens.

But, prosecutors alleged, Tapia Rodriguez’ first murder victim was another immigrant. Unlike the murder weeks later of Sundberg, who through her addiction had gotten mixed in with Tapia Rodriguez’ circle and was killed for allegedly turning in a cartel member to law enforcement, Sosa was kidnapped and murdered during his commute to work, prosecutors claim.

Though the Herald has been unable to positively confirm Sosa’s immigration status, Barrientos, the friend and roommate he was kidnapped with, is undocumented and has applied for a visa as a victim of a major crime, according to prosecutors. While Sosa was allegedly murdered as a result of his ex-wife’s complaints to Tapia Rodriguez that Sosa was seeing another woman, Barrientos was reportedly an entirely random victim.

While Barrientos told the court in the trial’s early days about that fateful December morning, during which he was shot in the shoulder and Sosa was shot dead, his wife held Sosa’s mother as she shook in her seat. Sundberg’s sister and mother also consistently attended proceedings, as they had during the trial into Jill’s murderers, to observe as the proceedings unfolded.

Indeed, though Sosa was the first to die, it was during the course of Sundberg’s murder investigation that prosecutors found fingerprints, tire tread and other key pieces of evidence they have since used to accuse Tapia Rodriguez and his cohorts of Sosa’s murder.

Over the course of just over two weeks, prosecutors have painted what they claim is a clear picture of the case with the help of testimony from Campuzano and Albarran Varona. Defense counsel, meanwhile, had largely taken the tact of poking holes in the prosecution’s case, trying to convince the jury to doubt the state’s story, as opposed to presenting a clear, alternative version of events.

In particular, the defense cast doubt on the veracity of the testimonies from the material witnesses, each of which was given in exchange for immunity from further prosecution. In Albarran Varona’s case, he escaped potential first-degree murder charges, among others. Prosecutors addressed this in closing arguments, claiming that the witness’ testimony had not only been vital to building the case, but he had also decided to implicate himself as one of the gunmen.

“Could he have told us a more useful lie?,” McCrae asked jurors. “Absolutely. He could have told us Mr. Gutierrez was the driver.”

McCrae also pointed to what he characterized as minor inconsistencies between Albarran Varona’s story and Barrientos’ recollection of the events, stating that they were indicative of a person giving a sincere if imperfect account instead of tailoring his story to their case.

After the state concluded its closing arguments, Bob Kentner, counsel for Tapia Rodriguez, began his own. Kentner opened with his own metaphor, talking about his brother’s prowess as a carpenter, and that brother’s oft repeated phrase, “the devil is in the details.”

The details of the case, Kentner stated, were not as clear cut as the state presented them. He began by again questioning the credibility of Albarran Varona and of Campuzano, painting them as self-serving and ruthless.

“The state has some star witnesses in this case,” Kentner said Tuesday. “One is Julio Albarran Varona. What a deal! He’s literally getting away with murder in this case, and attempted murder of Mr. Cano Barrientos. If he’s 20 right now, he’ll be out by 40. He’ll have a life to live.”

After initially lying to police in the Sundberg case, he only began to cooperate once he was presented with immunity from all charges, Kentner said.

“The way this works is that you have to rat someone out, whether it’s true or not, because the focus is on him,” Kentner said. “You’ve got to point the finger, maybe at someone the police doesn’t like, someone they’re gunning for, otherwise the whole thing doesn’t work. You don’t get the deal unless you point the finger.”

Kentner pushed back on the state’s claim that Albarran Varona had, after being promised immunity, volunteered information he could not have known if he had not been there himself. Albarran Varona’s attorney had received information regarding what the state knew in advance of his client’s talk with detectives, and had coached his client on what to say to receive a deal, Kentner posited.

Further, Kentner pointed to discrepancies in Albarran Varona’s testimony regarding how many people were involved in the kidnapping and what happened with casings from the scene.

“His testimony contained lies,” Kentner said. “L-I-E-S, lies. Put yourself in his position, what are you willing to do to go home, go back to your family, to your kids? Would you be willing to lie?”

Then, Kentner turned to the testimony of Campuzano, who he said was motivated by two counts of first-degree assault over her head for the kidnapping, both of which she cut a deal to avoid in exchange for her testimony, despite admitting some role in the murder of the father of her children.

That testimony changed significantly every time she was interviewed by police and when she testified, Kentner said. She claimed at first she knew nothing of the incident, then her reported involvement increased incrementally each time she spoke with police, Kentner continued. The amount of people involved changed each time, her level of willingness changed each time, the events after the murder changed each time, and they only began to solidify after she got an attorney, Kentner stated.

In her testimony, Cuevas had also alleged that Campuzano had discussed hiring men from Vancouver to kill her ex-husband, a far-cry from simply wanting to strike fear in Sosa, Kentner said.

Prosecutors have previously said that any discrepancies could be explained by fear: Campuzano had been threatened into silence, they said.

Kentner contended that point, noting that Campuzano early on had been willing to implicate at least one of the men later alleged to be involved.

“She said, you have to understand, I was in fear for my kids,” Kentner said. “Then why did she rat out one of them? Turning on one of them is turning on all of them. If you’re spilling the beans, it doesn’t make a difference.”

The state’s physical evidence, Kentner claimed, was no better than its star witnesses. He questioned the circumstances and quality of fingerprints, shell casing machining marks and tire tread marks that were used to put his client at the scene of Sosa’s murder, and further questioned the weight that should be given to these forensic disciplines in the face of academic criticism of their scientific rigor.

It is unclear whether the defense’s strategy, strikingly similar to the failed strategy of the defense in the Sundberg case, would sway the jury. By the end of Tuesday’s proceedings, the defense counsel for Marcos Gutierrez had still not begun their closing statements. Once they have concluded, the state will have an opportunity for rebuttal, at which time the jury will begin its deliberations.

Nearly three years after Sosa’s death, a decision in the case is expected Wednesday.