Jury Urges Death Penalty for Killer of Maywood Officer : Courts: Edgardo Sanchez Fuentes, 23, will be sentenced Dec. 16. No decision was reached on the fates of his two companions who joined in 1992 crime spree.

A Los Angeles Superior Court jury Monday recommended the death penalty for Edgardo Sanchez Fuentes, the convicted triggerman in the fatal shootings of a Maywood police officer and a Van Nuys grocer during a 1992 crime spree.

But the same jury reached no decision on the fates of Sanchez’s companions, Benjamin Alberto Navarro and Jose Contreras, who also were convicted of the murders and a number of armed robberies.

None of the three young men showed much reaction Monday as the verdicts were read.

Sanchez, 23, is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 16 and it is still possible that Superior Court Judge Jacqueline A. Connor will reject the jury’s recommendation and sentence him instead to life in prison without parole.

Sanchez’s lawyer, Public Defender Jim Coady, said Sanchez had been willing to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence but prosecutors rejected the offer because the victims included John Hoglund, 46, the first Maywood police officer ever killed in the line of duty. Hoglund was shot as he checked out a grocery store where a burglar alarm had gone off.

Also killed during the trio’s string of holdups was Lee Chul Kim, 49, who ran the Woodley Market in Van Nuys.

Navarro, 24, and Contreras, 22, are to appear in court Jan. 20 for a hearing on whether the penalty phase of their cases should be re-tried before a new jury.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Grosbard said he and his colleague Susan Speer would consult their supervisors before deciding whether to begin the process anew. The jury voted 10 to 2 for a life sentence for Navarro, and 8 to 4 for life for Contreras, indicating the majority believed neither man deserved death.

Heartened by those votes, defense lawyers expressed confidence that the case was essentially over and their clients’ lives would be spared.

“They’re not going to re-try it,” said Richard Leonard, one of Contreras’ attorneys. “They’ve already given it their best shot.”

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In an effort to humanize Contreras for the jury, Leonard’s brother and law partner, James Leonard, traveled with a cultural anthropologist to Honduras to learn what he could about Contreras’ life in his native village.

He left school at age 8 to help support five brothers and sisters after their father abandoned them, James Leonard said. The youth was so well-remembered that 70 townspeople walked for miles in extreme heat to be interviewed by Leonard and Prof. Michael Winkelman of Arizona State University, who told the jury of their experience.

“I think that was some very powerful testimony,” Leonard said Monday.

But while Contreras had no discernible criminal record in his native country, Navarro and Sanchez did, said Grosbard. Navarro, of El Salvador, had a history of stealing, and Sanchez, from Honduras, was sent to a reform school there, Grosbard said.

The prosecutor said the fact that the three men entered this country illegally played no role in their conviction. But Coady disagreed, saying, “This is a very bad time to deal with a case like this. We questioned the jurors and many had very strong feelings about it.”