MacDonald Killers Won’t Face Death

Prosecutors will not try again to seek death sentences against two men and a woman convicted of strangling and murdering Yorba Linda teen police informant Chad MacDonald in 1998.

The decision came two weeks after a Norwalk jury deadlocked over a punishment for the trio and the judge declared a mistrial in the case’s penalty phase.

Defendants Michael Martinez, 22, Florence Noriega, 30, and Jose Ibarra, 21, will be sentenced to life terms without the possibility of parole at a hearing Dec. 16, said Victoria Pipkin, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

The trio was convicted of torturing and killing MacDonald because he worked as a drug informant for the Brea Police Department. The eight-woman, four-man jury also convicted the three of kidnapping, robbing and trying to murder MacDonald’s girlfriend, then 16.

Pipkin said prosecutors opted against a new penalty phase hearing after the MacDonald family urged them not to.

MacDonald’s mother, Cindy, “doesn’t want to go through this again,” said Lloyd Charton, her attorney. “She feels at peace that justice was done. The main thing is these killers never walk out into freedom again.”

Martinez’s attorney, Richard Leonard, said the decision did not come as a surprise.

“I never thought they would retry it, and even if they did, they would never get the death penalty against my client,” he said. “It would have been a waste of everyone’s time.”

At the penalty phase hearing, the jury voted 9 to 3 for the death penalty against Noriega and Ibarra, and 7 to 5 for Martinez.

The case led to a new state law restricting the use of youths in undercover police work. It also prompted Cindy Macdonald to file a $10-million wrongful-death lawsuit against the cities of Brea and Yorba Linda. That case is pending.