Jurors May Get Soto Murder Case Monday

The lawyer for Gladis Soto asked jurors Friday to put themselves in his client’s shoes--those of a battered woman who snapped and killed her husband after years of humiliation and sexual abuse--and spare her a sentence of life in prison.

But during the daylong session of closing arguments in a trial that has stretched five weeks, Deputy Dist. Atty. Patricia Murphy painted Soto as a murderer masking herself as a victim. Murphy told the jury not to give Soto a break for what she had done because “it would undermine protection for women who really deserve it.”

Prosecutors are seeking a first-degree murder conviction for the 38-year-old Ventura woman in the shooting, dismemberment with an electric saw and burning of her husband, Pedro Alba.

The jury is expected to begin deliberations Monday and could conclude before Christmas.

Soto has admitted killing Alba. But jurors must decide whether her actions were premeditated or triggered in the heat of the moment by humiliation or fear for her life. If convicted of first-degree murder, Soto faces 50 years to life in prison.

In an emotional closing argument, defense attorney Jorge Alvarado told jurors Soto should at most be convicted of manslaughter.

He described her as a protective and devoted mother who stayed too long with a womanizing and abusive man for the sake of the couple’s five children, then tried to cover up the killing to protect the children from the truth.

Throughout the case, Alvarado has built his defense on the argument that Soto was suffering from battered women’s syndrome. He argued that she killed Alba after he returned home from a visit with the latest in a series of lovers, then raped and humiliated her, triggering memories of a lifetime of sexual abuse and fear here and in her Mexico homeland.

That sent her into a trance-like state, he said.

“She wasn’t able to control her behavior,” Alvarado said. “Her emotions were removed from the action.”

But Murphy told jurors Soto’s actions were not conducted in self-defense or in the heat of passion. Instead, Murphy said, they were premeditated, motivated by Soto’s long-standing jealousy over her husband’s relationship with his girlfriend, Maria Esther Ortega.

“This case is about revenge. Revenge and retaliation,” said Murphy, positioned just feet from the red electric saw Soto used to dismember Alba’s body, which she then dumped over a bridge into the dry bed of the Ventura River and set afire.

“Remembering what he’s done and working up your resolve to kill someone is premeditation, not a flashback,” Murphy said.

“This case is all about Esther,” she said. “It’s not about abuse. Before, [Soto] could count on these women meaning nothing to him. Esther had a different effect on Pedro. Esther was the woman Pedro was going to leave her for.”

Murphy said Soto’s actions after the shooting show she was not a hapless victim driven by fear. She disputed Alvarado’s argument that Soto’s maternal instinct is what drove those actions.

“How could motherly instinct cause you to [kill] your husband while your children were in the home, cut him up into pieces and douse him with gasoline?” she said. “She cut him up because she couldn’t fit him into the car, and she burned him because she didn’t want anyone to know.”

Soto was arrested after a homeless man told authorities he saw a woman setting fire to trash bags on the Ventura River bottom. Police were able to identify the body through fingerprints.

Murphy told jurors Soto had purchased the gun less than a week before the shooting and waited until Alba was asleep before putting the weapon to his head and firing. She also disputed Soto’s claim of rape, saying medical evidence did not corroborate the claim, and suggested Soto had lied about being raped to justify her actions.

Friday’s closing arguments wound down a trial marked by gruesome photographs and testimony on Alba’s use of Viagra. Testimony came from friends, relatives, experts, a Catholic priest and even Soto’s adolescent daughter. Ortega testified she was not Alba’s girlfriend but his best friend.

In her closing argument, Murphy told the jury Soto always had the option to leave, and no matter how cruel Alba could be at times, he wasn’t threatening her life when she killed him.

But Alvarado beseeched jurors to put themselves in Soto’s state of mind. “The truth is something that’s very complex,” he said. “How many of us could cope with this kind of reality, pain or provocation?

“There’s two ways to kill,” he said. “Pedro had been killing Gladis slowly. When Gladis shot Pedro she killed him instantaneously. After 15 years of this abuse . . . she lost it.

“The prosecution might say losing it doesn’t excuse murder, and it doesn’t. But it explains it. Her judgment failed her.”