Jury acquits 2 of murder in drive-by shooting, but guilty of obstructing justice

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SALT LAKE CITY — A jury acquitted two men of murder in a 2013 drive-by shooting but found them guilty of failing to tell police what they knew about the death.

Alejandro Argumedo, 24, and Jose Carlos Salazar, 23, were among six men accused of gunning down Anthony Hernandez, 18, while he was walking with friends in West Valley City on July 27, 2013.

At a jury trial for both men that concluded May 15, defense attorney Rudy Bautista argued that his client, Salazar, didn't know what was about to happen when the cars pulled up alongside Hernandez. Ed Brass and Kim Cordova, who represented Argumedo, worked to discredit testimony of the state's two key witnesses, who had originally been charged in the shooting.

A jury found Argumedo and Salazar not guilty of murder and felony discharge of a firearm, first-degree felonies, but convicted them of obstruction of justice, a first-degree felony under a gang enhancement.

The gunman, Armando Jose Majano, now 22, pleaded guilty to murder, a first-degree felony, in October 2015 and was sentenced to at least 15 years and up to life in prison. Majano told police he acted alone, Bautista said.

Another man in the cars that day, Ricardo Antonio Padilla, 30, was acquitted of the murder charge in January 2016, but was found guilty of felony discharge of a firearm and obstructing justice, first-degree felonies. He was sentenced to concurrent prison terms of 10 years to life for the firearm charge and five years to life for the obstruction charge. The sentence carried a gang enhancement.

Two others, Diego Armando Monfeda and Juan Eduardo Cruz, became witnesses in the case, including having the charges against them dismissed and serving no time, Brass said. He and Cordova argued that the accounts from the two men were so inconsistent and unbelievable, the jury couldn't rely on them.

"You simply cannot base a conviction on (testimony from) two people who have everything to gain and did gain it," Brass said. "They had every reason to lie and they did lie, over and over."

Bautista said Monfeda and Cruz were good friends who coordinated their stories before talking to investigators and benefitted from reporting "what the cops wanted to hear."

But when they had first talked to police, the two men said no one in the cars that day knew Majano had a gun and that there was no conspiracy to shoot Hernandez, Bautista said. However, they went on to tell police that Argumedo was driving the car Majano shot from, even though the vehicle belonged to Cruz's mother, while Salazar pointed out the victim from the first car

"I argued that their first statements — that there was no plan, that this was not supposed to happen, and nobody knew it was going to happen until it happened — were the truth," Bautista said.

Monfeda and Cruz's accounts of what happened varied drastically from accounts given by witnesses to the shooting, Brass said. The two claimed that after driving past Hernandez, the group left the neighborhood and Argumedo and Majano planned the shooting before heading back together 15 to 20 minutes later, while the rest of the group followed in another car.

However, two 13-year-olds who were with Hernandez and witnessed the shooting, said they saw a vehicle drive past slowly, and by the time they had stood up from the lawn chairs they were sitting in and walked to the next house, it returned accompanied by a second car, Brass said. As the window rolled down on the first car, the teens said they saw five people inside and shots were fired.

Brass noted that following the shooting, Cruz had deleted photos from his phone of himself posing with the gun used in the shooting, then asked others to do the same. Questioned by Cordova, Monfeda said he saw Majano shoot Hernandez three times from the vehicle and get out to fire two more shots after he fell to the ground, though a medical examiner's report confirmed all five shots hit Hernandez while he was upright.

Bautista said he did not ask jurors to acquit his client of the obstruction charge because while he wasn't part of a plan to kill Hernandez, "he arguably knew more than what he told the police" when he was first arrested.

Argumedo and Salazar have been in custody since the 2013 shooting, including originally standing trial alongside Padilla last year. That case ended in a mistrial for Argumedo and Salazar when Monfeda made comments on the witness stand that the judge had expressly forbidden, Brass said, while Padilla went on to be convicted of all but the murder charge.

Argumedo and Salazar are set to be sentenced July 17.