Closing Arguments in Convenience Store Slayings : Defendant’s Profanity Disrupts Murder Trial

Teofilo (Junior) Medina, who is accused of being a serial killer, interrupted closing arguments at his trial Wednesday with profanity after the prosecutor told jurors that “he’s the biggest coward you’ve ever seen.”

Medina called Deputy Dist. Atty. Bryan F. Brown a “chicken shit” and began to say more, but his outburst was cut off by one of his attorneys, Ronald P. Kreber, who snapped at him, “Junior, be quiet!”

After the jurors left, Orange County Superior Court Judge James K. Turner sternly advised Medina that he was hurting his own cause by interrupting the trial. Medina told the judge he was sorry. Turner answered: “You don’t have to apologize. I just want you to know I think you’re hurting your chances.”

During a pre-trial competency hearing, Medina had interrupted proceedings once by turning over the attorneys’ table. Two other times, he tried to leave the courtroom and return to a holding cell around the corner. Each time, it was because he spotted a photographer in the courtroom.

3 Store Clerks Killed

During Brown’s closing arguments, Medina kept busy at the defense table drawing a picture of a duck, with Bryan Brown’s name on it.

Medina, a prison parolee from Arizona, is on trial in connection with the murders of three convenience store clerks in separate robberies, plus charges connected to a fourth robbery, all in a three-week period in the fall of 1984. If convicted, he faces a possible death sentence. A fourth murder of a convenience store clerk in Corona during that time will be brought into the case by prosecutors only if the trial reaches a penalty phase.

Medina has pleaded not guilty, and not guilty by reason of insanity. If he is convicted, a separate sanity phase trial would follow. A penalty phase trial would be held only if Medina is found sane.

All three victims were found fatally shot in the head inside convenience stores that had been robbed.

“He’s worse than an animal,” Brown told jurors. “An animal wouldn’t do what he did.”

‘Cold, Calculated Killer’

Brown also called him “a cold, calculated killer, and a coward. He’s the biggest coward you’ve ever seen.”

Brown stopped after Medina’s burst of profanity, while Kreber calmed the shackled Medina.

Then Brown added:

“He can mouth off right here in this room. But he doesn’t have the guts to face up to what he did.”

Medina, 43, is charged with the 1984 murders of Horacio H. Ariza, 20, at an Arco mini-mart in Santa Ana on Oct. 18; of Douglas M. Metal, 23, at a drive-in dairy in Garden Grove on Nov. 4, and of Victor M. Rea, 20, at a Gasco service station in Santa Ana, on Nov. 5.

He was arrested after an aborted robbery attempt at the B & W Market in Santa Ana--one day after the Rea murder--when market owner Peter Yoon leaped over the counter and ran out of the store. Two witnesses saw Yoon and chased the gunman by car. The gunman at one point got out and shot at them, but they managed to get his license plate number. It was traced to a car that Medina’s sister had given him after he was paroled to California from Arizona in August, 1984. Medina spent most of his time at a sister’s home in Lake Elsinore and the rest of his time with a sister in Santa Ana.

Criminalists’ Testimony

Four different criminalists have identified a fingerprint on a Perrier bottle at the dairy drive-in as Medina’s. Also, a gun found on Medina when he was arrested had been used to kill all three victims, according to testimony from a prosecution expert.

There also was a police report in which one of Medina’s sisters told a police officer that she asked Medina how he could have killed the three young men.

The police report states that Medina answered, “Every cat has its night, every dog has its day.”

The report also states that Medina told her the quotation was from the Book of Revelations in the Bible. There is no such reference in Revelations. However, in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” there is a similar reference: “Let Hercules himself do what he may, the cat will mew, and dog will have his day.”

Also, there were witnesses at the scene of two of the murders who identified a green Maverick similar to Medina’s.

Points Out Discrepancies

Defense attorney Kreber conceded to jurors that the evidence was strong in the Yoon incident but tried to pick holes in evidence in the murders. He introduced a witness to challenge the results of the prosecution’s four fingerprint experts, and he tried to point out discrepancies among witnesses who had given the car descriptions.

Kreber also pointed out that Yoon, plus other witnesses, testified that they had seen a man in a green car, but did not remember him in glasses. Yet Medina wears glasses.

Prosecutor Brown did not overlook the point either.

Brown, who ordinarily does not wear glasses in court, wore his glasses while reading from his notes during rebuttal. When he began to discuss Kreber’s argument about the glasses, Brown took off his own glasses and said, “A lot of people who wear glasses sometimes don’t wear them all the time.”

Kreber has made clear to reporters from the beginning that the heart of his case will come at the sanity phase of trial.

Jurors were scheduled to begin their deliberations today.