Convicted Man to Get New Trial

An appeals court Monday ordered a new trial for Tinh Sanh Nguyen, one of three men convicted of second-degree murder in a 1988 shooting sparked by a quarrel in a Garden Grove restaurant.

The 4th District Court of Appeal found that the 22-year-old refugee should have been given a separate trial because a co-defendant who might have exonerated him was apparently too intimidated to testify.

Nguyen is serving a sentence of 17 years to life at the Pelican Bay State Prison in Crescent City, said his attorney, Handy Horiye. In a unanimous decision, the appeals court noted that the evidence against him was the weakest and said it was “reasonably probable that Tinh (Nguyen) will fare better on retrial.”

Police said the quarrel began when Nguyen became annoyed that a woman in the Tu-Hai restaurant was staring at him, but lawyers involved in the case said the motive for the shooting remains murky.

Nguyen’s two co-defendants, An Van Dao, 22, and Binh Nguyen, 20, tried to calm things down, but the woman and her friends “thought it was wise to decamp without eating,” the appeals court noted.

The defendants allegedly followed the woman and her friends out of the restaurant and shot at them as they drove away. Khang Duy Nguyen, 24, of Westminster, was killed and Anthony Nguyen, 28, of Fullerton was wounded. None of the victims or defendants are related.

Tinh Nguyen was the only defendant to testify. He did not remember much, the appeals court said, but he was drunk and did not have a weapon.

In a pretrial hearing, Binh Nguyen had named Dao as the shooter. But he was reportedly threatened while in jail by Dao, and refused to testify against him.

Attorneys for Tinh and Binh Nguyen asked Orange County Superior Court Judge Ragnar R. Engebretsen to try Dao first, then hold a separate trial for the other two men. The appeals court found the judge erred in denying that request.

If Dao had been tried first, the justices said, whether convicted or acquitted, he would no longer been a threat to Binh Nguyen. The latter would then have testified, and his testimony would have exonerated both himself and Tinh Nguyen, the court said.

The justices let stand the second-degree murder conviction against Binh Nguyen, saying the choice not to testify was his own. But they reversed Tinh Nguyen’s conviction, and ordered a new trial.

The justices also struck down part of Dao’s sentence in a move that his attorney, Stephen Gilbert, said could shave two years from Dao’s sentence of 26 years to life.