Idiot appeals court rewards defiant cop killer
Sam22
Panel says LAPD violated civil rights of man convicted of killing
officer.
By Susan McRoberts
Staff writer
A state appellate court has ordered a new trial for a Los Angeles gang
member convicted of shooting and killing a Los Angeles Police
Department officer who lived in Norwalk.
Justices of the Second Appellate District Court said the civil rights
of Catarino Gonzalez Jr. were violated at the end of his first
interrogation by LAPD detectives.
During the questioning, Gonzalez was not told he had the right to
speak with an attorney, even after he told investigators, "for
anything you guys are going to charge me, I want to speak to a public
defender, too, for any little thing,' according to court documents.
During a subsequent polygraph examination, Gonzalez complained that he
was tired and ill, the documents said.
Gonzalez's attorney Sylvia Whatley Beckham argued before the appellate
justices that upon being told that the machine had implicated him in
the officer's murder, Gonzalez began to say what the examiner wanted
to hear that he had fired the shots at the police and disposed of the
gun.
At a third interrogation, Gonzalez immediately told LAPD Detective
Rich Aldahl he still had not seen a public defender.
"It is undisputed that the police failed to provide appellant with
counsel and kept him in custody between the first and second
interrogations,' wrote Justice Paul Boland.
"Accordingly, the statements appellant subsequently made...were
obtained in violation of Miranda.'
Gonzalez was convicted in May 2001 of killing LAPD Gang Unit Officer
Filbert Cuesta Jr., who died Aug. 9, 1998.
Officer Cuesta grew up in the home where his parents still live in the
unincorporated South Whittier county area. He attended St. Paul of the
Cross Elementary School and graduated from St. Paul High School.
The news of the ruling in the death of their only son came at the
worst possible time right before Christmas, said Rose and Filbert
Cuesta Sr. of Whittier.
"We had been doing so well and here it comes again,' said Fil Cuesta
Sr. "It's opening up old wounds.'
Deputy District Attorney Darren Levine, who prosecuted the case in Los
Angeles Superior Court, said he expects the state attorney general
will file for a review of the judges' ruling by the state Supreme
Court.
"This is not over,' Levine said Tuesday. "I am very disappointed by
this decision, but if we have to retry this case, I'd be proud to
prosecute it.'
Gonzalez, now 25, has been serving a life sentence at High Desert
State Prison in Susanville.
Officer Cuesta was 26 and married with two small children when he was
shot in the back of the head as he sat in a patrol car in a gang-
infested Los Angeles neighborhood.
Cuesta and his partner, LAPD Officer Richard Gabaldon, were parked in
the street at 1 a.m., waiting for a wedding reception to break up.
Detectives said three men walked to an intersection behind the patrol
car and one man fired 11 shots from a 9mm handgun. One bullet killed
Cuesta in the driver's seat. Gabaldon was not injured.
That night, LAPD detectives interviewed 89 people. Several named
Gonzalez as the shooter. Gonzalez turned himself in the next night and
underwent two interrogations and a polygraph test.
Roxie Hougan
>Court orders retrial in murder
>
>Panel says LAPD violated civil rights of man convicted of killing
>officer.
It's not like the cops don't know the rules. Why do they fuck
things up like this? As much as it burns me to see people get off
on technicalities, it burns me just as much to know that it's the
cops that set them free.
El Senor
No college diploma required, a military-style hierarchical
structure and culture that eschews the normal standards of
professional conduct, and union protections that make legal or
administrative punishment virtually impossible.
-Mike