S.D. Officer Convicted in Wife’s Slaying : Agrio’s Job Worked Against Him, Jury Foreman Says

San Diego Police Officer Pablo Agrio was convicted Friday of second-degree murder for kicking open his bedroom door, fighting with his wife over control of his gun and then shooting her in the back of the head.

Moments after the verdict was read, the 30-year-old officer, who once had a promising career within the Police Department, was handcuffed and led away to jail.

His attorney said he would appeal the verdict and hoped to be back soon in San Diego County Superior Court to argue for his client’s release on bail pending his sentencing next month.

Judge’s Statement

But Judge Terry B. O’Rourke made his feelings clear from the bench as Agrio was being escorted by marshals out of the courtroom.

“He’s been convicted of second-degree murder,” the judge told defense attorney Edmundo Espinoza. “So I don’t believe your arguments for bail are appropriate.”

The four-year police veteran faces a mandatory sentence of 15 years to life, and two years could be added because a firearm was used in the slaying.

The trial marked the second time Agrio was tried in the case. The first trial ended in a hung jury.

But, whereas the first jury deliberated four days before ending in a deadlock, the second jury of 10 men and 2 women was out in a day and a half after casting only two votes on Agrio’s guilt.

Mitchel Marcus, the jury foreman, said it was Agrio’s background as a police officer that worked against him, particularly since the jury believed he should have exercised more control while fighting with his wife on the bedroom floor last year.

“We felt he should have been more in control of his temper and his weapon,” Marcus said. “His comments on the witness stand about not knowing the safety mechanism of the gun, well, those are hard to take since he was a police officer.”

Agrio has remained a member of the Police Department since the March 26, 1988, shooting. However, he turned in his badge and gun and his status has been reduced to being on administrative leave without pay.

Now that a conviction has been rendered in the case, police officials said Agrio’s employment status will be re-examined.

“A convicted felon cannot be a police officer in this state,” Capt. Dick Toneck said.

Free on Bail

Agrio had been free on $60,000 bail. His wife, 24-year-old Alma Agrio, had been studying to become a police reservist at the time of her death.

Testimony in the four-week trial showed that the couple fought often, and that, although Alma Agrio was a heavy drinker, her husband had an uncontrollable temper and was known as a wife beater.

Alma Agrio’s mother, Dora Medina, said after Friday’s verdict that she often worried about her daughter’s safety inside the couple’s Paradise Hills home.

“They had many problems,” Medina said. “I saw a lot of fights.”

Agrio, speaking slowly and softly on the witness stand, testified that the shooting was an accident that occurred after his wife returned home drunk that night and the couple began to argue in the bedroom.

“I was holding her wrists down,” he said. “She began spitting in my face.”

He said she grabbed his gun from the bedroom dresser drawer.

“I realized that’s where I kept my guns and she was obviously going for one of my guns. Then things started moving real fast,” he said.

He said she turned toward him, assumed a three-point position and prepared to fire.

“The next thing I know, I’m staring at the barrel of this loaded gun pointed at me,” he said. “Needless to say, I tried to defend myself.”

Struggle for Gun

He said he tried to push the gun away and ran around behind her. He said they struggled and, “I got over her shoulders and tried to grab the weapon.”

“I’m very scared” at that point, he said. “I’m very upset. Fear was more my emotional state than anything else. Fear had overcome my body.” He said the weapon fired as he pulled the gun away from behind her. “I dropped the gun and stood up,” he said. “I was surprised. I looked at her and sensed she wasn’t moving.”

He called police, he said, and “I remember I was pretty hysterical.”

But Deputy Dist. Atty. A. Craig Rooten said the charge of second-degree murder was justified because Agrio allowed his temper to flare to the point that his intentions were clearly to harm his wife.

He pointed out that Agrio kicked in the bedroom door, tossed papers throughout the room and eventually shot his wife in the center of the back of the head, while he alone had control over the revolver.

He also noted that Agrio had earlier in the day told a baby sitter that his wife “is going to regret” going to the bar. And he said that, just minutes before Alma Agrio was shot, the police officer told a friend of hers on the phone: “I’m not through with her yet.”

“This man was a police officer; he knows what guns can do,” Rooten said. “The physical evidence cries out that there was an intentional act to kill another human being.”

Rooten also suggested that Agrio could have disarmed his wife without shooting her, the way he was trained to do so as a police officer. “He treated suspects on the street better than he treated her,” the prosecutor said.

Instead, Rooten told the jury, Agrio took advantage of his wife at a moment when she was most vulnerable: drunk and beaten up.

“She gave up,” he said. “She was on her knees on the bedroom floor, limp and crying. And he shot her in the back of the head.”

But Espinoza, the defense attorney, argued that the case was full of doubt and that “only God knows exactly what happened.”

He contended that his client actually was able to control himself, through self-discipline learned over seven years in the Marine Corps and during four years with the San Diego Police Department. He also said Agrio was studying for the sergeant’s test and attending law school at night, both in an attempt to improve himself and better his family’s life.

“They were an ordinary couple, an American couple,” he said, adding that the Agrios had a baby son, their own home and two cars.

“This was just like a regular family,” he said. “There was love in that family, in that union, in that marriage.”

But he said Agrio’s wife was threatening to undo all that Pablo had worked for. He said she was drinking heavily and had attended Alcoholics Anonymous counseling sessions. A hidden vodka bottle was found in the house, he said, and the autopsy found her blood-alcohol level to be .26, well above the .10 legal standard of intoxication.

And he said it was under these circumstances that Alma Agrio grabbed the revolver, spun around and aimed at her husband. “She said, ‘That’s it you bastard,’ ” Espinoza said. “Then she turned around with the gun.”

Agrio merely tried to defend himself, the defense lawyer said.

“It was excusable homicide,” Espinoza said. “I make no bones about it. I think the evidence speaks to that.”