Avila Defense Puts on Alibi Witnesses

Defense attorneys in the Samantha Runnion murder trial opened their case Monday by calling 13 witnesses in quick order to bolster their contention that Alejandro Avila was miles away from the child when she was killed.

The defense hopes that suggestions of Avila’s presence elsewhere will blunt the prosecution’s case, which includes evidence that DNA consistent with what could be the child’s tears was found inside his car.

The 30-year-old factory worker could get the death penalty if convicted. He is accused of forcing the 5-year-old into his green Ford Thunderbird after prowling a Stanton condominium complex, the home of Samantha and another girl who had previously accused him of molesting her.

Samantha’s nude body was found the day after her July 15, 2002, abduction, at a popular hang-gliding launch off Ortega Highway, the mountain road snaking between south Orange County and Avila’s Lake Elsinore home in Riverside County. She had also been molested.

Avila’s lawyers say Samantha died between 1 and 6 a.m., a timeline they say will free their client because other testimony has shown that he was many miles away, in Temecula, at various times during that period. Hang gliders found Samantha’s body about 3:15 p.m.

A man who said he regularly drove by the spot where her body was later found testified Monday that about 4:30 that morning, he saw two vehicles at the site: a motorcycle and a truck, into which someone appeared to be loading or unloading an object.

Hang gliders don’t usually come to the area until after noon, when the updrafts start from the lake, said the witness, Johan Larsson.

“If someone was there at that time, they either should have seen the body or they were the ones putting it there,” defense attorney Philip Zalewski said after court recessed. “The point is that someone was there at that crucial time period who was not the defendant.”

Prosecutors have said that the presence of other vehicles at the site was a coincidence. And after looking at a photograph of the area, Larsson acknowledged that the truck was more than 300 feet from where the body was found, a spot now marked by a rock memorial.

Monday’s witnesses included five people who stayed the night of the kidnapping at the Comfort Inn in Temecula, where Avila was also a guest. All of them, including a retired police officer, said they neither saw nor heard anything strange that night.

The man who stayed in the room next to Avila’s said he heard no sound of struggle. The witness, Theodore Davis, said he did hear a clock alarm in Avila’s room about 5:30 a.m., followed by the sound of a shower.

Scientists who studied the maggots found on Samantha’s body concluded that she probably died before 6 a.m. His lawyers say that during the time prosecutors believe Avila was assaulting Samantha, he was driving around, mulling over his tumultuous relationship with a woman he was dating. Cellphone records indicate that he called her several times the night of the slaying and asked her to meet him at the Temecula motel.

“The timeline doesn’t match up,” Zalewski said outside court.

Avila’s attorneys said they planned to call employees from the county crime lab and DNA experts to establish their other contention: that law enforcement planted evidence in Avila’s car to frame him because they were under pressure, brought by national media attention, to nail a suspect. Prosecutors have called that claim “outlandish.”

Testimony from defense witnesses is expected to end early next week. Jurors have been told to expect the case, including the penalty phase in case of conviction, to last through June.

During the prosecution’s case, which featured 35 witnesses over seven days of testimony, scientists testified that the tire tracks and footprints found near Samantha’s body matched Avila’s car and shoes. Also, they said, Avila’s DNA was found underneath the girl’s fingernails, indicating that she may have fought him.

In a two-month hearing before the trial, prosecutors won permission to introduce particular kinds of DNA evidence that have only rarely been used in California courts. But prosecutors have since opted against that strategy, instead introducing the more typically used kinds of DNA in court and shaving as much as three weeks of testimony from their case.

Based on evidence taken from Avila’s home computer, prosecutors painted a picture of a man with a ravenous desire to have sex with children. A story on the computer written the day before Samantha’s abduction detailed sexual encounters a man had with his daughters and infant grandchildren, according to testimony from a sheriff’s investigator.

Also, three girls related to one of Avila’s former girlfriends testified that he had molested them in their bedrooms and at bath time. Avila was acquitted regarding two of the girls, and charges were never brought in the case of the third. But they were allowed to testify for the limited purpose of establishing whether Avila was predisposed to commit the crimes against Samantha.