Convicted Man to Be Tried in Woman’s 1992 Oxnard Slaying : Crime: Trial involving Christopher James Sattiewhite is the first capital punishment case in Ventura County in more than two years.

On Jan. 27, 1992, two fishermen walking along Arnold Road in Oxnard happened upon the partly clothed body of 30-year-old Genoveva Gonzales in a drainage ditch.

The Oxnard woman had two bullet wounds to the forehead and one to the cheek. An autopsy revealed that she had been raped and shot at point-blank range the night before.

Today, nearly two full years later, a convicted felon who is already serving a 21-year prison sentence for rape and robbery in a separate case in Oxnard is scheduled to go on trial in Ventura County Superior Court in the slaying.

Christopher James Sattiewhite was indicted 13 months after the slaying when an acquaintance told police that he had seen the defendant shoot Gonzales.

The trial--which is expected to last at least nine weeks--will be the first death penalty case tried in the county in more than two years.

The last Ventura County death penalty trial was for former day-care aide Gregory Scott Smith. He was tried in October, 1991, for killing 8-year-old Paul Bailly of Northridge and burning the boy’s body beyond recognition. A jury sent Smith to Death Row.

Authorities have said the Gonzales case is one of the most senseless killings in the area in recent years.

Prosecutors said Sattiewhite and another man kidnaped Gonzales--described by police as a mother of four with a history of drug convictions--for rape. When Sattiewhite inadvertently called out the second man’s name, they agreed that Sattiewhite would shoot and kill her, lest she identify them, prosecutors have said.

Attorneys for both sides in the Sattiewhite case declined to be interviewed for this story, but a preview of their arguments can be gleaned from court records.

As is typical in death penalty cases, defense attorneys have not spent much time disputing the evidence against their client in pretrial hearings.

Instead, their strategy has been to focus on Sattiewhite’s mental competency. For example, Judge Lawrence Storch in August appointed a psychologist to evaluate Sattiewhite after attorney Willard Wiksell claimed that the man has brain damage.

However, a psychologist concluded that Sattiewhite understands the charges against him, can operate in a rational manner and does not demonstrate signs of mental illness.

Prosecutors have also disputed the claims of mental illness, noting that Sattiewhite is a high school graduate and has held a number of odd jobs throughout Ventura County. They contend that he killed during the commission of a rape and kidnaping and, under California law, should be put to death.

The prosecution’s main witness will be a 23-year-old convicted felon named Bobby Rollins, a friend of Sattiewhite at the time of Gonzales’ slaying. Rollins was convicted last year of rape and robbery along with Sattiewhite in an Oxnard Beach case.

Rollins has told investigators that on the night of the 1992 Super Bowl, he saw Sattiewhite hold a .32-caliber handgun to Gonzales’ head and fire three shots.

Rollins had faced a possible sentence of more than 50 years in the beach case. But prosecutors agreed to seek no more than 20 years on the condition that Rollins plead guilty and testify against Sattiewhite in the Gonzales case, prosecutors said.

In seeking the indictment against Sattiewhite, prosecutors had Rollins testify before the grand jury.

Rollins told the panel that he was driving along Oxnard Boulevard late Jan. 26, 1992, when he stopped to talk with Sattiewhite near a hamburger eatery.

He said they went around the corner to a nearby alley, where Sattiewhite’s Cadillac was parked. Another man was in the rear of the car, as was Gonzales, he told the grand jury. Gonzales appeared to be struggling with the man.

He said he got back into his own car and followed the Cadillac and its occupants to some apartments on West 5th Avenue. At the apartments, Sattiewhite pulled the Cadillac into a carport. Rollins said he could see the man in the back was raping Gonzales.

During the rape, the man punched Gonzales in the face with a closed fist several times, and she reacted by spitting on the man, testified Rollins, who said he did not intervene.

Rollins said he was told by Sattiewhite that the woman had been “gaffled,” or kidnaped off the street.

The man in the back seat is serving prison time in an unrelated case and is still under investigation in the Gonzales matter, authorities have said.

Rollins left the apartments but agreed to meet Sattiewhite an hour later to drink beer at a field off Arnold Road.

When he arrived, Rollins testified, the man in the back seat was pushing an unconscious-looking Gonzales out of the Cadillac. He said Sattiewhite caught her before she hit the ground and dragged her to the drainage ditch.

That’s when he saw Sattiewhite pump three bullets into the woman, he said.

If Sattiewhite is found guilty, the jury would decide whether he deserves to be put to death.

If the case proceeds to this phase, prosecutors plan to tell the jury that Sattiewhite was sentenced to prison after pleading guilty to the rape and robbery of another Oxnard woman who was accosted as she and her boyfriend sat on Oxnard Beach. That incident occurred in September, 1992, eight months after Gonzales’ slaying.

The fifth of 10 children, Sattiewhite was born in Oxnard on Aug. 31, 1969.

His mother was a homemaker and his father a psychiatric technician at Camarillo State Hospital and a minister. The father left the family when Sattiewhite was still young, court records say, although they don’t say how old Sattiewhite was at the time.

“He was devastated by his father’s disappearance and the abandonment it meant,” court-appointed psychologist Kathryn M. Davis wrote in her report. “He describes his problems as beginning shortly thereafter.”

Sattiewhite, through his attorneys, declined to be interviewed for this story.

After finishing high school in 1987, Sattiewhite jumped from one odd job to another. He was a busboy, cook and box boy, among other things.

He told the psychologist that he couldn’t keep jobs because he lacked transportation and “got involved with the wrong people and with drugs and alcohol.”

He denied involvement with cocaine, but said he used some acid and PCP. Describing the effects of the drugs, he said: “You see things that are not there and do things you otherwise wouldn’t do.”

Although Sattiewhite understands the charges against him, he feels overwhelmed, according to Davis’ report.

“He describes the experience of agitation and depression. He has had thoughts of killing himself. His emotions and thoughts are fragmented,” it said. “If the profile is valid . . . the current level of distress could be characterized as psychotic.”

Jury selection in the case is expected to begin today and continue for about three weeks.