3 Convicted in ‘Wrong Way’ Murder Trial

A Superior Court jury Monday convicted three street gang members of murdering 3-year-old Stephanie Kuhen and attempting to kill five others, including her mother, when their car ventured down a dark, dead-end street north of downtown Los Angeles in September 1995.

The jury found Anthony Gabriel Rodriguez, 28, Manuel Rosales Jr., 22, and Hugo David Gomez, 17, guilty of murder and attempted murder in the “wrong way” shooting case. Jurors could not reach a verdict on a fourth defendant, Augustin Lizama, 17, who was charged with murder and attempted murder for allegedly blocking the vehicle by pushing a trash can into the street. He faces the possibility of a new trial.

The verdicts, reached after six days of deliberations, brought tears of relief to Stephanie’s family and tears of anguish to the family and friends of the defendants, who face 45 years to life in prison when they are sentenced Aug. 1 by Superior Court Judge Edward A. Ferns.

“Thank God we had a jury that could see what these people did and send a message that they aren’t going to stand for it,” Stephanie’s grandmother, Linda, told reporters.

As the verdicts were read by Ferns’ clerk David Rivera, the courtroom was silent except for the quiet weeping of the defendants’ loved ones.

“I’m just saddened by all this,” Rodriguez’s stunned father, Benjamin, said moments after his son and the others were led away by deputies.

The three defendants were convicted of first-degree murder in the slaying of Stephanie and of attempted murder for opening fire on the car that also carried her mother, Robynn; uncle, David Dalton; brothers, Christopher, 5, and Joseph, 2, and Tim Stone, the boyfriend of Robynn Kuhen.

The family was traveling in its car early Sept. 17, 1995, when driver Stone, who testified that he was taking a shortcut home from a birthday party, turned down Isabel Street in Cypress Park and the car came under fire. Stone and Joseph Kuhen were wounded in the attack that killed the toddler.

After the verdicts were announced, several jurors said the evidence was compelling against the three convicted defendants. The only question, they added, was whether Lizama should be held equally accountable when his alleged crime was placing a trash can in front of the car to block its escape.

“There were a few [jurors] who felt that he didn’t know that the other defendants were going to shoot,” jury foreman Tom Farrell said.

Before declaring a mistrial in the case of Lizama, the judge asked Farrell if there was anything that might help resolve the deadlock among jurors, who were split 9 to 3 in favor of convicting the fourth defendant.

Farrell responded with a note to Ferns that asked if the jury could consider a lesser charge than second-degree murder for Lizama. When the judge said they could not, Farrell declared that he believed that the jury would be unable to reach a verdict. Ferns responded by declaring a mistrial.

The dispute over Lizama’s complicity, the jurors said, was the most tension-filled part of their deliberations. “It got intense . . . some felt he would be getting away with murder and some felt that he couldn’t be convicted like the rest,” said a 39-year-old male juror who declined to be identified.

Although that juror refused to say how he voted on the matter, juror Kendal Tann said he believed that Lizama was guilty whether or not he knew his partners were going to fire their weapons.

“He was guilty, just any interpretation of the law would show that he was guilty,” Tann said. “I knew in my heart he was guilty.”

When asked why he was unable to persuade the other jurors, Tann shrugged.

“I tried, for three days I tried,” he said. “I pulled out every stop. It was not only a factual thing; it was a personal feeling I had after looking at all the evidence. But I couldn’t convince them.”

Tann, a 41-year-old retail store manager, said the jury’s deliberations also were lengthened by an effort to be thorough.

“We looked at all the evidence,” he said. “We read the jury instructions a million times. We wanted to understand the instructions so that we could truly be guided by the facts.”

Once that was done, Tann and other jurors said, the path to their decision was clear.

“Despite the fact that every one of us felt the pain of the families on either side, it was too late, the act had been done,” said juror Opal Joseph. “The important thing is the decision to become a member of a gang. You make a choice and when you make a choice, you have responsibilities. And I think that what needs to be emphasized is that parents need to take responsibility for their children.

“It’s too late once they get in the system,” the legal secretary said. “The law doesn’t have a heart.”

In a city inured to gang mayhem, the shooting on Isabel Street managed to stir emotions and provoke outrage.

It was, authorities would say, a sobering reminder of how easily the worlds of civility and street gangs can collide, and how even a cheery family outing can end in murder.

During the trial, Robynn Kuhen and others in the car testified that they mistakenly drove down the narrow street en route home at 1:30 a.m.

Almost as soon as they entered Isabel, they said, they knew they were in peril.

Steering the family’s car slowly past the gang members, driver Stone recalled how he, Robynn, and Dalton stared straight ahead, careful to avoid eye contact with the gang members drinking beer and partying on the street.

As the car reached the end of Isabel and made a U-turn, Stone said, he and the others noticed that a trash can had been suddenly placed in the middle of the street to block their exit. And at that moment, he and the others testified, their only instinct was to flee.

As Stone accelerated down the street, the car came under a fusillade of gunfire. Although its windows were shattered and tires punctured by more than a dozen bullets, the car made it back to Stephanie’s nearby home and, Stone and others thought at the time, out of the firing zone.

But moments after they arrived, the family realized that something was wrong with Stephanie. As her younger brother screamed that he wanted out of the car, Stephanie sat motionless in the backseat, mortally wounded by a single gunshot to the head.

That scene was relived during the trial when Deputy Dist. Atty. Pat Dixon played back a haunting 911 emergency call for help from Dalton.

“We have two people who’ve been shot . . . they shot my friend and my niece, my little baby niece,” Dalton told a Los Angeles police dispatcher. “We need people right now.”

Moments later, Dalton’s voice grew increasingly frantic when he realized that his niece was not breathing. “She’s not awake,” Dalton yelled. After more anxious moments, Dalton realized that the girl may be dead. “She’s not breathing,” he told the dispatcher before beginning to wail.

“No!. . . . No! . . . No!” he screamed.

Even as authorities insisted that the four accused gang members were coldhearted thugs, defense attorneys sought to lay out a different scenario for jurors.

First, they said, the prosecution’s case hinged largely on the words of a former gang member, Marvin Pech, 20, who was initially arrested in the case but was given immunity from prosecution in exchange for testifying against the four defendants.

Under questioning by Deputy Dist. Atty. Eleanor Hunter, Pech said he recalled seeing two defendants--Rodriguez and Gomez--open fire on the car. Pech also said he heard gunfire coming from the entrance to the street, where he saw defendant Rosales armed with a handgun. And, Pech said, he saw Lizama standing only a few feet away from a trash can that had been placed in the narrow street to block the car’s exit.

But portraying Pech as a self-serving liar, defense attorneys disputed his account of events and one lawyer, Lawrence Forbes, produced a witness who claimed that she heard Pech admit taking part in the shooting.

Ultimately, the jury found Pech’s account credible.

“We felt he was an extremely believable witness,” foreman Farrell said.

Defense attorneys also sought to recast the shooting as a horrible tragedy in which whoever opened fire on the car did so out of fear that the unknown vehicle, slowly traveling down Isabel, might have been carrying armed members of a rival gang.

Rejecting the prosecution’s theory that the gang members fired at the car because they demanded “respect,” attorney Forbes insisted that the tragedy occurred for a much simpler reason.

“They were worried themselves,” Forbes said of the gang members, “that they were going to be victims of a drive-by shooting.”

Forbes said Monday: “It was a terrible tragedy. And the jury decided to mete out as much guilt as it possibly could.”

But jury foreman Farrell offered a different epilogue.

“The bottom line is that we have a little girl who is dead,” he said. “It doesn’t matter whether it was stupid or disrespectful. The bottom line is a child is dead. And I think that is what has to be on everyone’s mind. That an innocent child was murdered.”