Jury convicts man in Dana Point Harbor maritime murder trial

A jury on Friday convicted an Orange County man of first-degree murder for the death of a friend who drowned after being shot three times during a late-night boat excursion off the Dana Point Harbor in 2019.

The verdict rejected a self-defense case put forth by Hoang “Wayne” Xuan Le 40, who testified he didn’t know Tri “James” Minh Dao had died until he was arrested for his murder two months later.

It follows three weeks of testimony that included acquaintances, some paid informants, who spoke of Le discussing plans to kill Dao, then boasting of the murder afterward. It also follows the removal of a juror who, during the fourth full day of deliberation, said pressure from other jurors was hurting her mental health, then later in the day said she was considering harming herself if forced to continue.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter authorized the juror to receive free counseling through a federal court employee assistance program before moving in an alternate juror and ordering deliberation to begin anew. He extended the offer on Friday to all jurors.

Carter scheduled Le’s sentencing for Feb. 28. Le’s co-defendant, Sheila Ritze, is to be tried next; a pretrial conference is scheduled Monday morning. Both have been in jail since their arrests in December 2019.

Dao’s mother, who attended every day of the trial, cried after the verdict and told a reporter she was grateful for the hard work of the prosecutors, assistant U.S. attorneys Greg Scally and Greg Staples.

The jury’s verdict embraces prosecutors’ theory that Le and Ritze plotted Dao’s murder, with a conviction for conspiracy to commit murder as well as using a firearm during a crime of violence.

Jurors had the option of second-degree murder or manslaughter, but Scally said in his closing argument Dec. 3 that the evidence clearly showed a premeditated conspiracy.

“I want you to call this what this is: murder,” Scally told jurors.

Le’s lawyers, Craig Wilke and Sheila Sarah Mojtehedi, declined to speak to reporters after the verdict, but they pushed in trial a self-defense narrative that worked to cast Dao as the aggressor. Wilke described Le as “not the sharpest knife in the drawer” during this closing argument Dec. 3, reminding jurors of an expert’s testimony that he had a mental impairment and lacked the ability to plan.

The case was brought in federal court under maritime jurisdiction law, but Wilke argued federal authorities were essentially doing a favor for Dao’s brother, who was an FBI informant and was close with the lead investigator.

He also emphasized that key witnesses didn’t come forward until after Le and Ritze’s arrest and that their stories simply parroted a narrative that had been provided to them through a U.S. attorney’s office news release and related news reports, including a Los Angeles Times article. Ritze’s mother in law, Sandra Ritze, used in her written statement to prosecutors the same word the press release used to describe the lobster-fishing trip Ritze and Le took Dao on — “guise” — but she misspelled it.

“Usually the conclusion follows the investigation. The conclusion doesn’t start the investigation. But I submit to you that’s what happened here with the FBI’s investigation.”

But Scally reminded jurors that the witnesses who said they heard Le talk of plans to kill Dao didn’t believe him until after they learned Dao’s body had turned up in the Pacific Ocean.

“A body turns up, and you reconsider whether you should keep that information to yourself,” Scally said. Le took the stand in his defense, testifying that the trip was a genuine lobster-fishing trip that took a scary turn when Dao lost his temper and pointed a gun at Le when Le refused to loan him money.

Prosecutors said Le was actually motivated by Dao’s life insurance policy. They said Le had discussed killing Dao because Dao owed him $30,000 to $40,000, which he thought he could recover from a life insurance policy through Dao’s longtime girlfriend, Natalie Nguyen. Le placed a GPS tracker on Nguyen’s car and testified he did so because he wondered where Dao was and wanted to try to find him, but he admitted in cross-examination that the tracker was for Nguyen, not Dao.

Prosecutors also said Le’s claim that he thought Dao might have swam back to shore was unbelievable. The boat was 3 miles off the Dana Point Harbor when Le shot him.

“Ironman triathlons don’t even involve a 3-mile swims. I think they’re 2.4,” Scally told the jury. “And in Ironmans, they don’t do them fully clothed, in the middle of the night with nobody else around, with two bullet holes in them, bleeding profusely from blunt-force trauma wounds.”

Meghann M. Cuniff is a contributor to Times OC. She’s on Twitter @meghanncuniff.

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