Trial in Police Informant’s Murder to Begin

A jury is scheduled to hear opening statements today in the trial of a Norwalk trio accused in the torture-murder of teenage police informant Chad MacDonald, whose death led to a new law restricting the use of youths in undercover police work.

The Yorba Linda 17-year-old was found beaten and strangled to death in a South Los Angeles alley in March 1998 after he went to a suspected drug house. MacDonald’s 16-year-old girlfriend, who accompanied him, was raped, shot and left for dead in Angeles National Forest, but she survived.

Defendants Michael Martinez, 21, Florence Noriega, 28, and Jose Ibarra, 19, face the death penalty if convicted. They have pleaded not guilty.

MacDonald’s mother, Cindy MacDonald, plans to attend portions of the trial in Norwalk but may forgo the testimony detailing the manner in which her son was slain, her attorney, Lloyd Charton, said Sunday.

“The only thing that I want for my client is that she gets justice in the criminal proceeding,” Charton said.

MacDonald agreed to work as an informant for the Brea Police Department after he was arrested in January 1998 on charges of possession of methamphetamine. Brea police officials have said the teenager worked as an informant only once--on a drug buy--and that he had stopped working with them weeks before the murder.

Charton disputes that claim and said MacDonald was continuing to work as a drug informant. The suspects learned of MacDonald’s work with law enforcement and turned on him, Charton believes.

MacDonald’s mother, who said police pressured her into permitting her son to make drug buys, has filed a $10-million wrongful-death lawsuit against the Brea police and the two cities the department serves, Brea and Yorba Linda.

On the evening of the attack, MacDonald and his girlfriend met with Martinez, Noriega and Ibarra at a house in Norwalk. Ibarra’s attorney has said the trio never intended to kill MacDonald, only to “teach him a lesson” for being a drug snitch.

His death raised questions about law enforcement officials using minors in undercover operations and in 1998 prompted a new state law restricting the use of youths as police informants. The law prohibits the use of children ages 12 and younger as informants and requires police to get permission from a judge to use youths ages 13 through 17.