4th Defendant Accepts Plea Bargain in ‘Wrong Way’ Case

One month after three fellow defendants were found guilty of murder charges that could put them behind bars for life, a 24-year-old gang member Thursday accepted a plea bargain that could mean his release by year’s end for his role in the infamous “wrong way” shooting of toddler Stephanie Kuhen.

Under an agreement approved by Superior Court Judge Edward Ferns, Marcos Antonio Luna pleaded guilty to one count of assault with a deadly weapon for his involvement in the September 1995 late-night assault on a car carrying Stephanie and members of her family in Cypress Park. In exchange for his guilty plea, Luna, who was accused of blocking the car’s path with a trash can, will not face one count of murder and five counts of attempted murder.

Luna now faces three years in state prison and, with County Jail time already served, could be out of incarceration in about 100 days. If he had elected to face prosecution and was convicted on all counts, his term could have been 45 years to life--the sentence now facing three gang members convicted June 2.

In that trial, Anthony Gabriel Rodriguez, 28, Manuel Rosales Jr., 22, and Hugo David Gomez, 17, were found guilty of murder and attempted murder for firing on the car carrying the family down a dark, dead-end street.

A fourth defendant, Augustin Lizama, 17, faces a retrial after the jury deadlocked on charges of murder and attempted murder for allegedly helping Luna push the trash can onto the street to block the car’s escape.

The co-prosecutor in the earlier case, Deputy Dist. Atty. Pat Dixon, said the decision to accept a plea agreement with Luna--who was to be tried separately--was based not only on his less significant role in the tragedy but the possibility of a prosecution that could prove more troublesome than the one that just ended.

“The three persons convicted [last month] were found guilty of shooting repeatedly into a car of six people, including three children,” Dixon said. “To compare Mr. Luna to that activity is very difficult . . . this defendant was obviously but marginally involved compared to the others.”

In addition, Dixon said, trying Luna presented not only security problems for witnesses willing to testify against him but the possibility of reopening the trauma of that evening for the Kuhen family.

“To have the victims testify again would be very difficult for them,” Dixon said.

Luna’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Michael Russo, agreed that the plea arrangement was appropriate given the facts in the case.

“Luna was never alleged to have been a shooter, was never alleged to have had a gun, was never alleged to have even encouraged anyone to shoot,” Russo said.

Before the agreement was reached, the attorney for one of the three gang members convicted unsuccessfully asked the judge for the names and addresses of the jurors in the recent trial so he could seek evidence about whether they had made up their minds about the defendants’ guilt before deliberations.

Referring to a story in The Times that quoted jurors after the verdicts, attorney James Sussman argued that his client, Rodriguez, may have grounds for a new trial if it could be established that some jurors were guilty of misconduct by prejudging the facts in the case.

Ferns denied Sussman’s request, concluding that the remarks cited by the attorney showed that jurors, while obviously moved by testimony in the case, still relied upon the evidence to reach their verdicts.