Clerk’s Killer Is Given Life Sentence

A 22-year-old man convicted of killing a 7-Eleven clerk was sentenced Friday to life in prison without parole, a term imposed after a jury spared him of the death penalty.

Noel Uriel Vargas Jr. shook his head as Orange County Superior Court Judge John J. Ryan handed down the prison sentence and ordered him to pay $5,000 in restitution for the murder committed during a robbery.

Prosecutors had argued for the death penalty during trial, but a jury took into account Vargas’s heinous childhood and decided on an 11-1 vote that he should not be executed for the crime.

On Aug. 21, 1995, Vargas walked into a La Habra convenience store and shot to death Nirmal Singh on his 44th birthday. Singh, who emigrated from India with his wife and three sons, had volunteered to work the night shift that day to impress his boss, prosecutors said.

“It has been emotionally very tragic,” said Kuldip Singh, the victim’s brother-in-law. “My nephews, they can’t understand. . . . They ask, ‘What did we do that we were punished?’ ”

In an emotional address to the court, Singh’s father-in-law, Amolak Singh, said he agreed with the guilty judgment and prayed for Nirmal Singh’s soul to rest in peace. “I pray that [Vargas] should be a better person . . . and I pray for his family,” said Amolak Singh, 61, of La Habra.

Vargas, one of two defendants in the case, has steadfastly denied being involved in the crime, which was captured on videotape. In his probation report, Vargas said he was sorry for “everything he’s done” but did not specify his role in the robbery-murder.

Gary Pohlson, who represented Vargas, had questioned whether the person in the videotape was indeed Vargas, but he failed to sway the jury. On Friday, Pohlson asked for a new trial after discovering that jurors had conducted an experiment in which they put sunglasses and a hood over a photo of Vargas. Ryan, however, ruled that “what they did was authorized” and denied the motion for a new trial.

Vargas’s accomplice, Benjamin Perez of Whittier, was convicted of first-degree murder and robbery in 1996 for his role in the killing and sentenced to 26 years to life in state prison.