Survivors Stunned by Murder Suspect’s Acquittal : Inglewood: Prosecutors were certain they could convict a 21-year-old man of murder and rape. For jurors, though, the case wasn’t so simple.

On its face, it appeared to be what prosecutors call a “slam-dunk” case.

In brutal detail, a mother and teen-aged daughter told a Los Angeles Superior Court jury last week how they and another woman were robbed, raped, tied up and shot in their Inglewood home two years ago. The third victim, a housemate, died.

When asked to identify the man who did it, each of the survivors pointed calmly toward the defense table and J. C. Metoyer, a one-time next-door neighbor and reputed gang member known on the streets as “Man Man.”

Relatives of the woman who died were so certain Metoyer would be convicted, they said, that they didn’t even bother to follow the trial very closely.

But late Thursday afternoon, the jury acquitted Metoyer of all 11 charges against him--including murder, attempted murder and rape--freeing him from a possible death sentence. The 21-year-old was released early Friday morning from men’s Central Jail, where he had been held for two years awaiting trial.

To the case’s prosecutor, police and the relatives of Sarah Laureano--the 19-year-old who was killed in the attack--the outcome was unimaginable.

The authorities spoke of their shock and dismay.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Andrew McMullen called the defeat his toughest in seven years as a prosecutor. “I was shocked,” he said. “I thought I had convictions.” Inglewood Police Capt. James Seymour, who supervised the investigation, said he was “at a loss” to explain the acquittal.

Laureano’s sister, cousin and mother-in-law wept when they learned of the verdict. Then they talked about their anger at “the system” and their fear now that Metoyer is free.

But Metoyer’s lawyers said the verdict was fair. Attorney Jill Lansing said several factors put a reasonable doubt in the jurors minds: The victims’ descriptions of the attack differed between the time police first talked to them and the trial; doctors and police could not provide physical evidence to confirm the sexual assaults, and neighbors said the victims had a reputation for dishonesty.

The case was not nearly as simple as it first appeared, jurors said. “There was nothing straightforward in this case at all,” said juror Esther Richards, a court clerk. “There were just too many holes.”

No one questioned the terrible ferocity of the crime that led to Metoyer’s trial. Even in a city inured to violence, the attack triggered a wave of sympathy for the victims. Inglewood citizens formed a group and raised more than $8,000 for Laureano’s two orphaned children.

Laureano had been sharing a house with a 33-year-old woman and her daughter, 14, at the time of the attack. The women were living on welfare and just getting by, relatives said.

They were all familiar with Metoyer, then 19, who frequently came to visit his grandmother in an apartment building next to the victims’ home.

Inglewood police said at the time that an assailant approached Laureano in the early morning of June 3, 1989, in front of the home and forced her inside at gunpoint. Once in the house, the intruder reportedly tied up all three women and raped them, before shooting each at least once in the head. He fled with a pillowcase full of valuables.

The mother and daughter told police that it was Metoyer who attacked them, and authorities released bulletins and photos of the suspect. About a week after the attack, Laureano’s sister and cousin spotted him walking on a street in the Crenshaw District as they drove to a funeral home to view the dead woman’s body. They called police and Metoyer was arrested. He was held without bail until his release Friday.

McMullen presented a straightforward case in a trial that lasted just over a week. The prosecutor had both the mother and the daughter, who lost an eye in the attack, take the stand to identify Metoyer. And a deputy coroner described the gunshots that killed Laureano.

Lansing and co-counsel Thomas Grodin elected not to let Metoyer speak in his own defense. The defendant had earlier told police that he was walking home at the time of the crime.

Instead, the defense attorneys attempted to raise doubts in jurors’ minds by pointing out discrepancies in the case.

They noted, for example, that the mother first told police that she was attacked in her bedroom but said at the trial that the assault occurred in her living room. They suggested that the sexual assaults never happened, since medical examinations failed to reveal semen or bruises. And they emphasized the notes of two doctors, who wrote that the girl told them shortly after the attack who had done it.

“There were severe inconsistencies in the testimony, and there was no physical evidence to place Metoyer there,” Grodin said.

Finally, they presented two witnesses--one a Neighborhood Watch captain and the other Inglewood City Councilman Garland Hardeman, who occasionally patrolled with the neighborhood group--who said the victims had a reputation for dishonesty.

The defense attorneys argued, in closing, that the attack may have been retribution by someone other than Metoyer for some unspecified criminal activity that had gone on at the home.

McMullen countered that the inconsistencies in the victims’ stories were understandable, given the severe trauma of the attack. He argued that the lack of semen or other physical evidence is not unusual in sex crimes.

“The defense’s final argument was that this was some sort of pay-back,” McMullen said, “for some sort of criminal activity going on there and that the victims then picked out the defendant for no particular reason. . . . There was no evidence of that.”

But Richards and another juror said in interviews that the victims’ integrity was successfully called into question. With identification of Metoyer in doubt, the panel of nine women and three men waited intently for other evidence that would place Metoyer at the home on Doty Avenue that night, the two jurors said. But none was presented, they said.

Richards and juror William Fuhrer, a computer maintenance worker for the phone company, said they were troubled that the prosecution did not present character witnesses to support the victims’ integrity.

The two jurors wondered why no fingerprints, hair, semen or any other traces of Metoyer were left at the home. They also noted that none of the stolen property was ever recovered or linked in any way to Metoyer.

“Initially, I was ready to convict Metoyer,” Fuhrer said. “But with all the sampling there was nothing that connected to him.”

And the jurors also wondered how one man could control all three victims, since testimony showed the three were not tied up for several minutes.

Finally, they saw plausibility in the explanation that the crime was some sort of pay-back. “We had a feeling there was more going on with this case then we were being told,” Richards said.

But Ginovera Laureano was still disbelieving as she sat in her living room in South Central Los Angeles Friday. The 22-year-old knew a few simple facts. Her sister was dead. She had been left to care for two orphaned children. And no one had been held accountable.

“There was no justice,” she said. “There was nothing. What kind of system is that?”

It was Ginovera who identified Metoyer for police moments after his arrest two years ago. She said she worries that he will retaliate.

“Everybody has to live with fear,” she said, “because he is out.”

Metoyer could not be reached for comment. His defense attorneys said they do not know his plans, although Metoyer had mentioned moving out of state to live with relatives.