Jury Begins Deliberations in Woman’s Slaying

Citing evidence that already has sent one man to Death Row, prosecutors closed their murder case against an Oxnard man by telling jurors he ordered the death of a woman he had just raped so she could not identify him later.

Defense attorneys, meanwhile, ended the four-week murder trial of Frederick Lee Jackson by pleading with jurors to believe that the defendant is an innocent man being framed by the real mastermind of the plot to kill Genoveva Gonzales.

Jurors began deliberations Wednesday on charges of murder, rape and kidnaping. A guilty verdict could pave the way for Jackson to be sentenced to death.

Already on Death Row for Gonzales’ murder is Christopher Sattiewhite, the undisputed triggerman in the January, 1992, slaying of the mother of four.

But as they had argued last year at Sattiewhite’s trial, prosecutors this week said Sattiewhite was only doing Jackson’s bidding when he shot Gonzales three times in the face and left her partly clothed body in a drainage ditch along Arnold Road in Oxnard.

Prosecutors told jurors that Jackson was the only one with a motive to kill Gonzales because she knew him before he raped her the night she was killed, and consequently could identify him to police.

Gonzales might voluntarily have gotten into a car with Jackson and Sattiewhite--no one knows for sure--but once the rape began, she was a kidnap victim, Deputy Dist. Atty. Donald C. Glynn said.

For most of their closing arguments to the jury, defense attorneys took aim at a prosecution witness who said he came upon the scene just before Gonzales was killed and who accused his former friend, Jackson.

Even prosecutors called the witness, Bobby Rollins, “a vile human being,” but said without him they could not have solved the case.

“He absolutely is a despicable person, but of three violent, vicious predators, Bobby Rollins is the least culpable in this case,” Glynn said. “We dealt with a real scumbag--there’s no question about it. But I think you would have to conclude that we bargained well.”

Jackson, Rollins and Sattiewhite all belonged to a gang that sold drugs, attorneys said.

The trio also linked up to commit at least one other violent crime.

Four months before the Gonzales slaying, Jackson and Rollins raped a Thousand Oaks woman at an Oxnard beach while Sattiewhite held the woman’s boyfriend at gunpoint. The assailants also robbed the couple, who are now married and who gave damaging testimony against Sattiewhite at his trial.

Jackson was sentenced to 28 years in prison for the beach rape.

Meanwhile, Rollins had 30 years shaved off a potential 50-year prison sentence in that rape in exchange for his testimony against Jackson and Sattiewhite in their murder trials.

In the Jackson trial, Rollins testified that he had planned to meet Jackson and Sattiewhite the night of the slaying and drove up just as the unconscious Gonzales was being taken from the car by Sattiewhite before being shot.

Defense attorneys argued, however, that Rollins was in the car with Sattiewhite and he was the one who ordered Gonzales’ killing.

“Bobby Rollins is a rat who’s trying to turn into a mouse,” defense attorney Charles L. Cassy said. “I think it is likely Bobby Rollins is substituting Fred Jackson for his own actions.”

Defense attorney William Maxwell took that argument even further and said prosecutors knew Rollins could not be trusted.

“I’m going to suggest to you that the prosecution has known from the beginning that Bobby Rollins is a chronic inveterate liar, but they don’t care,” Maxwell said.

Genetic testing on sperm found in Gonzales’ body showed that Jackson was the rapist, Glynn told the jury. Jackson told police that Gonzales had sex with him voluntarily a day or two before the slaying in exchange for cocaine, but the prosecutor scoffed at that because there were no drugs in Gonzales’ body when she died.

“If she is that desperate to sell her body for $20 of cocaine, she’s going to use it immediately,” Glynn said. “She’s not going to store it.”

If the jury finds Jackson guilty of first-degree murder during either a kidnaping or rape, a second trial would be held to decide whether he should be sentenced to die or receive life in prison without parole.