Arguments in Death Penalty Case Concluded : Trial: Oxnard man is charged with kidnaping, rape and murder. He could get gas chamber or 25 years to life.

Lawyers in the first Ventura County death penalty case in more than two years wrapped up their closing arguments Tuesday and left the jury to grapple with two questions:

Was Genoveva Gonzales shot to death after a drugs-for-sex deal turned violent? Or was she killed to cover up the fact that she had been kidnaped and raped?

If the jury finds the latter to be true, 24-year-old Christopher James Sattiewhite of Oxnard will face a second trial that could send him to the gas chamber.

If not, Sattiewhite could face no more than 25 years to life in prison.

Sattiewhite is charged with murder, kidnaping and rape in connection with the Jan. 26, 1992, slaying of Gonzales, the mother of four.

Defense attorneys have admitted that Sattiewhite killed Gonzales. But they deny that the slaying was during the commission of either a rape or kidnaping, which the prosecution has to prove in order for him to face the death penalty.

Defense attorney Willard P. Wiksell told the jury of four men and eight women that the prosecution failed to prove during Sattiewhite’s three-week trial that the defendant is guilty of anything more than killing Gonzales.

“There’s a lot of testimony, a lot of witnesses,” Wiksell said. “But there is no evidence of a rape or kidnaping.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Donald C. Glynn disagreed.

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Glynn said the only reason Sattiewhite put a pistol to Gonzales’ head and squeezed the trigger three times was to conceal the fact that the woman had been raped by Sattiewhite’s accomplice, Fred Jackson.

“Christopher Sattiewhite executed the only witness who could tie them to the rape,” Glynn said. “This was an execution to remove a witness.”

The jury in Judge Lawrence Storch’s courtroom will begin deliberating on the issue this morning.

Glynn told the jury that prosecutors had proved that the victim indeed had been kidnaped and raped before her death.

Glynn told jurors that prosecutors only needed to link Sattiewhite to the rape and kidnap and not to prove that he was the one who executed them.

He said the defendant and Jackson, who has not yet been charged but is in prison on another rape case, abducted Gonzales at an unknown location in Oxnard. At some point, Jackson raped the struggling woman in the back seat of a Cadillac while Sattiewhite stood close by, Glynn said.

“This was not consensual sex,” Glynn told the jury. “This was rape, and Christopher Sattiewhite aided and abetted. He facilitated the rape.”

The defense has said that Sattiewhite killed Gonzales only after being ordered to do so by Jackson, whom they say Sattiewhite feared.

But Glynn described Sattiewhite as a callous killer who murdered the woman on his own accord after dragging her from the back seat of the car and to the ditch.

Glynn said that after lowering the unconscious woman to the ground, Sattiewhite “has to bend down on his knees, and he fires once, twice, three times.”

“This was not an impulsive act. This was not an act triggered by the heat of the moment,” Glynn said. “He did a cold-blooded act that was nothing less than first-degree murder.”

Defense attorney Wiksell, however, said that on the night of her death, Gonzales left the house looking for men with whom to trade sex for money or drugs.

“When Mr. Glynn stands up here and says she was not a prostitute, that’s utter nonsense,” Wiksell said.

He said she voluntarily got into the car because she knew Jackson. “Why did she go with Mr. Jackson?” Wiksell said. “Because she had no money and went to get dope.”

Wiksell said Gonzales and Jackson engaged in voluntary sex in the rear of the car and that the woman spat on Jackson when he refused to give her dope afterward.

That is when Jackson knocked the woman unconscious, then ordered Sattiewhite to shoot her, he said.

“If a prostitute spits on you, you get real mad,” Wiksell said.

Wiksell also tried to discredit Bobby Rollins, Sattiewhite’s former roommate, who was the only prosecution witness to testify to seeing the murder. Rollins said that he saw Jackson rape the woman and that Sattiewhite was aware of the rape as well.

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Wiksell noted that Rollins was not charged in the case, although he acknowledged going with the defendants after the killing. He also told the jury that Rollins was not credible because prosecutors have promised to shave 30 years off a possible 50-year sentence in an unrelated rape case for his testimony in the Sattiewhite murder trial.

“This guy didn’t hit a home run. He hit a grand slam,” Wiksell said of Rollins. “He got free on this case. He got 30 years lopped off in another one, and he’s going to be out and walking the streets among us in eight years, thanks to the generosity of the district attorney’s office.”