3 Killers’ Fates Now Up to Jury

A Norwalk jury on Monday began deliberating whether to return death sentences against two men and a woman convicted of torturing and murdering a Yorba Linda teenage police informant in 1996.

The deliberations in Los Angeles County Superior Court started after five days of arguments in the penalty phase of the murder trial of Michael Martinez, 21, Florence Noriega, 28, and Jose Ibarra, 19.

Last month the trio was found guilty of beating and strangling Chad MacDonald, then dumping his body in a South Los Angeles alley in March 1998.

The jury is deciding whether the defendants should be executed for committing a “special circumstance” murder that occurred after they kidnapped and robbed the 17-year-old boy.

The three also were convicted of kidnapping, robbing and trying to murder MacDonald’s then-16-year-old girlfriend. She was raped, shot and left for dead in Angeles National Forest but survived and provided key testimony at the trial. Noriega and Ibarra were found guilty of raping her; Martinez was acquitted on that charge.

The case led to broad condemnation of the Brea Police Department, which had used MacDonald as an informant, and a new state law that requires police to get permission from a judge before using youths aged 13 through 17 as informants.