Sanchez Attorney Says Proof Is Lacking

Picking apart the prosecution case, a defense attorney told jurors Wednesday that there was no reliable evidence on which to convict serial rapist Vincent Sanchez of killing a Moorpark woman during an alleged kidnap and rape attempt two years ago.

Chief Deputy Public Defender Neil Quinn said there was no clear motive or logical explanation for why his mentally unstable client fired six shots from an AK-47 assault rifle into the car of college student Megan Barroso, 20, as she drove home two years ago.

But he said the prosecution theory that Sanchez, 32, was trying to stop Barroso so he could rape her is “simply ludicrous.”

“I really don’t think, when you look at the evidence, it makes sense,” Quinn argued during his closing summation in Ventura County Superior Court. “It is absolute speculation.”

Sanchez, an unemployed former construction worker, could face the death penalty if jurors find him guilty of first-degree murder committed during a kidnapping and attempted rape.

Quinn said Sanchez is innocent of those charges, but guilty of a lesser charge of second-degree murder because he fatally shot Barroso at a deserted intersection in Moorpark on July 5, 2001. A second-degree murder conviction would spare Sanchez from a possible death sentence.

Prosecutors are expected to deliver a rebuttal to the defense arguments Monday.

Earlier this week, they argued that Sanchez, a convicted serial rapist, spotted Barroso leaving a friend’s house in Newbury Park and tried to run her off the highway to commit a sexual assault. Paint from Sanchez’s truck was found on Barroso’s damaged car, indicating he sideswiped it.

Deputy Dist. Attys. Lela Henke-Dobroth and Dee Corona argued that after the collision, Sanchez sped ahead of Barroso, exited the Moorpark Freeway and fired at her car as she turned onto New Los Angeles Avenue.

One of the defendant’s friends testified at trial that two weeks before the shooting, Sanchez bragged that he could stop a car by firing an AK-47 into the engine block. The prosecutors told jurors that was Sanchez’s intent, but one of the bullets pierced the car and fatally hit Barroso in the lower abdomen.

They contended that Sanchez carried her alive from the car and tried to rape her at an unknown location before she died. Her partially clothed body was found in a ravine a month later. The coroner could not determine whether a sex assault had occurred.

While not specifically providing his own theory of the slaying, Quinn told jurors Wednesday there was no reliable evidence to support the version offered by prosecutors.

Quinn said it made no sense that Sanchez would use a high-powered assault rifle to commit a sexual assault. He noted that in the 11 sex assaults for which Sanchez has been convicted, he never used a firearm. Rather, those incidents involved knives and, in one case, a dart gun.

Furthermore, he argued, Sanchez’s tactics in those assaults were different. He wore gloves and a mask, carried duct tape and was careful never to be seen by his victims. He slipped into homes undetected and was so cautious that for five years he avoided arrest as the long-sought Simi Valley serial rapist.

That Sanchez would suddenly try to subdue a woman on a Ventura County highway with a truck and an AK-47 doesn’t add up, Quinn said. He suggested instead that his client, who had recently been admitted to a county mental hospital, was off his medication, drunk, angry over a breakup with his girlfriend and out of control when he encountered Barroso.

Quinn said there could have been a car accident that set off his client, but ultimately no one knows what happened. “I defy you to tell me that you know,” he told jurors, “because you don’t on this evidence.”

During his summation, Quinn described Sanchez as immature, troubled and lacking in judgment. He suggested that it was likely Sanchez fled the scene after the shooting and returned later to find Barroso dead behind the wheel. Quinn said his client may have then carried her to the ravine.

Under that scenario, Sanchez would not be guilty of kidnapping because legally a person cannot kidnap a dead body.

To shore up that theory, Quinn talked at length about medical evidence in the case. Two pathologists and a former military surgeon testified that Barroso could have died within 15 minutes of being shot, but also could have survived for up to two days if the bullet did not hit any major blood vessels. A more precise time of death was impossible to pinpoint because of decomposition.

Quinn argued that it was reasonable, based on Barroso’s driving pattern, to conclude that she lost consciousness moments after being shot and died shortly thereafter.

He noted that her car slowly glided to a stop near the intersection -- evidence that she was not conscious. If she were, Quinn argued, she would have sped away and tried to find help.

“The people’s whole case,” he said, “is starting to crumble.”