Death Penalty Sought for Killers of Officer, Market Owner : Trial: The prosecutor says they ‘wallowed in greed.’ The defense asks jury for life in prison for the convicted murderers of Officer John Hoglund and Lee Chul Kim.

Saying that they “wallowed in greed” and conjuring up images of their victims’ bullet-riddled bodies, a prosecutor on Wednesday implored a jury to recommend the death penalty for the killers of a Maywood police officer and a Van Nuys market owner.

“I would ask . . . that you show them the same compassion that they showed their victims,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Susan Speer, in the second and final day of closing arguments in the penalty phase of the trial.

She presented her arguments to the same Los Angeles Superior Court jury that last month convicted Jose Contreras, Benjamin Alberto Navarro and Edgardo Sanchez Fuentes of first degree murder in the death of Officer John Hoglund, who was shot when he responded to a burglary alarm at a Maywood market on May 29, 1992.

Contreras and Fuentes were also convicted of killing Lee Chul Kim on May 4, 1992, in the freezer of his Van Nuys grocery store after he returned from the bank with a large sum of money.

Speer ended her lengthy presentation by asking jurors “to find the courage and strength to do the right thing and impose the death penalty.”

The men face the possibility of execution because jurors previously convicted them of several special circumstances, including killing a police officer and committing murder during the course of a robbery and to avoid arrest. Contreras and Fuentes were also convicted of an additional special circumstance of committing multiple murders.

Defense attorneys asked that instead of death, their clients be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. They argued that all three men had endured lives filled with poverty and hardship in their native Central America.

The men, all in their early 20s, sat quietly as attorneys fought over their fates, except for Contreras, who broke into tears as his lawyer implored the jury to spare his life.

“Send Jose Contreras to prison where the good Lord will determine when he dies,” attorney James Leonard said.

Leonard reminded jurors of previous testimony by a cultural anthropologist who traveled to Contreras’ former home in Honduras and interviewed 50 people whose comments painted Contreras as a man with a “tremendous reputation.”

Contreras was forced to start providing at age 8 for his mother and family, some of whom walked for miles in 100 degree temperatures to testify on his behalf, Leonard said.

But Speer raised the question of whether Contreras ever asked his mother if she wanted his “blood money” and contended that he sent her only a small portion of the money he stole during a string of robberies throughout the Los Angeles area.

“Mr. Contreras is looking out for himself first, last and always,” Speer said.

The prosecutor saved her harshest criticism for Sanchez Fuentes, who actually fired the shots in both killings. His lawyer appealed for his life on the grounds that he has found God since being caught and jailed.

“He may say he has Christ in his heart but he has Satan in his soul,” Speer countered.

Speer discounted testimony given by several clergy on behalf of Sanchez Fuentes, arguing that they do not know the real Sanchez Fuentes, who she accused of lying throughout the trial.

“He lied to the clergy, he lied to God and now he’s lying to you,” she told jurors. “He killed a store owner because he stood between him and money and he killed a police officer because he stood between him and freedom.”

James Coady, a deputy public defender representing Sanchez Fuentes, acknowledged that his client killed both men, but asked jurors to put the case in perspective with all other murders, particularly ones he described as more heinous, before determining whether to impose death.

“What is the worst of the worst?” Coady asked. “What types of cases deserve the death penalty?”

Eric K. Davis, an attorney for Navarro, who was not charged in the Kim slaying, contended his client’s life should be spared because he never killed or tortured anyone, but merely acted as a lookout during the robberies.

“He should be punished by spending the rest of his life in prison,” Davis said. “Next to death it’s the worst punishment possible.”

Navarro, who was beaten by his father as a young boy and later sexually molested by an uncle, is not the vicious killer that prosecutors have made him out to be, Davis said.

Jurors will begin deliberating today. During the previous guilt phase of the trial, Fuentes and Contreras were each convicted on 38 counts--including murder, robbery, assault with a deadly weapon and stun guns--stemming from seven robberies. Navarro was found guilty of 32 counts for his role in five robberies.

Prosecutors alleged that during the robberies the defendants used electric-shock stun guns to torture restaurant and store employees into handing over money and threatened to cut off one woman’s fingers.

“These were not Robin Hoods,” Speer said. “They were stealing from everybody, including the poor, and keeping it for themselves.”