OXNARD : Jury Urged to Decide Man Didn’t Kill Wife

The attorney for an Oxnard man accused of murdering his wife during a birthday party urged jurors Wednesday to decide that a friend of the defendant fired the fatal shot and later lied about it.

While attorney Willard Wiksell told the jury it was illogical to believe Jose Santos Castaneda, 26, killed his wife, Deputy Dist. Atty. Patricia M. Murphy asked the panel to convict the defendant of second-degree murder.

Following the closing arguments, the jury deliberated briefly and is scheduled to continue today.

Castaneda is charged with shooting his wife, Mina, through the head moments after returning to a Santa Paula birthday party April 2. Murphy said Mina Castaneda, 25, was angry at her husband for leaving the party and was wielding a baseball bat when he returned.

The defendant left the party after a friend, Anthony Castillo, asked for help in committing a robbery so Castillo would have money to buy his daughter a birthday present, the prosecutor said.

Castaneda could not stand it when his wife humiliated him in front of Castillo after the robbery, Murphy said.

“It was the ultimate insult to his control,” Murphy told the jury. “His immediate response was to demonstrate he wasn’t going to put up with that.”

But Wiksell told the jury it was Castillo who pulled the trigger. Castillo was the one who committed the robbery while Castaneda waited in the car, and his claims of having returned the gun to the defendant before the shooting do not make sense, Wiksell said.

Castaneda has two prior robbery convictions. He faces a life sentence under the “three strikes” law if he is found guilty of killing his wife, even if the jury rules that the crime is manslaughter rather than murder.