Despite attempts by defense attorneys to cast doubt on DNA evidence, a judge ordered the man charged with kidnapping and killing Moreno Valley teenager Norma Lopez to stand trial.
Jesse Perez Torres, 36, of Long Beach, faced a preliminary hearing in a Riverside courtroom Monday, June 10 — nearly three years after her slaying. As he sat in court wearing a red jumpsuit and shackles, his family was on one side of the courtroom, while Norma’s family was on the other.
An expert testified that DNA on an earring Lopez was wearing when she died matched Torres’ DNA, but defense attorneys tried to show that the evidence was not strong enough.
The prosecutor, Chief Deputy District Attorney Mike Soccio, then pressed analyst Daniel Gregonis, “Are you confident the suspect was a match?”
After a long pause, Gregonis replied, “I believe the accurate sample is a candidate match.”
In holding Torres over for trial, the judge said this case makes one look up the definition of probable cause and sufficient evidence. But he said the prosecution’s case exceeded the preliminary hearing’s very low standard for evidence.
Prosecutors have not decided whether to pursue the death penalty or life in prison without parole.
Norma, 17, was abducted July 15, 2010, while walking alone to a friend’s home after summer school classes at Valley View High. An intense search began after police found her backpack and signs of a struggle in a field.
Five days later, Norma’s body was found in a different field about a mile away by a man mowing his weeds.
Investigators had never said whether Norma was sexually assaulted. In court Monday, it was revealed that her body was too badly decomposed to determine that, or even an exact cause of death. A single antigen of sperm was found on Norma’s body, but it could not be tested for DNA.
Torres was arrested in October 2011, after his DNA was determined to be a match for DNA found near Norma’s body. He lived in Long Beach at the time of his arrest but had been living across the street from Norma’s school when she was abducted.
Torres also was seen in a video driving a SUV that was similar to one seen leaving the field where Norma’s body was found, a detective testified Monday.
Forensic analysts tested Norma’s body, her clothing and her earrings, and found a single sample of DNA that didn’t belong to Norma, DNA analyst Maria Richardson testified Monday. The earring contained Norma’s DNA and a minor DNA profile of an unknown man.
Initially, there was insufficient evidence of the man’s DNA to submit it to the Department of Justice crime lab, Richardson said. But once it was magnified, criminalists found enough of the sample to test for a match with the California criminal offender database.
Torres was matched from a sample he was required to provide following a domestic violence arrest earlier in 2010. The domestic violence charge was dropped but his DNA sample was catalogued in a federal database.
DNA analysts with the Department of Justice had no knowledge of Torres or if the sample came from someone who was alive or in jail until the match was confirmed, Richardson said.
“We had a partial profile. There was very little information entered,” Richardson said. “We were looking for possible candidates for a match … It came down to picking the best one.”
Defense attorneys argued that the DNA profile used to bring charges against Torres appeared in one in two Hispanics, one in three African Americans and one in five Caucasians. Defense attorneys also said the earring contained another unknown man’s DNA.
The long delay between Torres’ arrest and the preliminary hearing was caused by lengthy DNA testing and conflicting attorney’s schedules, the prosecutor said last month.
John Nash Law Blog 