As federal jurors left the courtroom for lunch Wednesday, a picture of 3-year-old Luis Damian Escobedo's tiny face on a medical examiner's table loomed high on a courtroom projection screen, his long, dark eyelashes forever closed above the gunpowder burns that dotted his chubby left cheek and ear.
His aunt, great aunt and grandmothers filed out of the courtroom without looking back, still wiping the tears that minutes earlier had come with loud sobs.
U.S. District Judge Daniel T.K. Hurley gently told them he was concerned about the effect their emotions would have on jurors and asked them to step outside if the weight of the weeks-long trial became too much to bear.
When they came back, Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Carlton continued giving jurors the final words they would hear from him in his case against the two men he says are responsible for the brutal 2006 shooting deaths of Luis Damian, his 4-year-old brother Luis Julian, and their parents, Jose Luis and Yessica Escobedo.
|
Family slain
|
|
|
Jose and Yessica Escobedo with sons Luis Julian (left) and Luis Damian (right).
Husband, wife and two children from Greenacres found shot to death off Florida’s Turnpike in northern Port St. Lucie.
More news, photos
|
"It's a tragedy that the kids were there," Carlton said. "But they were eliminated because they were potential witnesses."
Witnesses, Carlton said, to crimes that carry a potential death penalty for Daniel Troya and Ricardo Sanchez, who allegedly carried out the killings during a carjacking to take the cocaine the children's father was carrying in the family's SUV as they headed south on Florida's Turnpike.
During his closing statements, Carlton reminded jurors of evidence that both men worked for alleged drug-ring leader Danny Varela, who is not charged in the deaths but is on trial for drug conspiracy and weapons charges, as is his girlfriend, Liana Lee Lopez.
Escobedo allegedly worked as a supplier for Varela and was killed to erase a drug debt and to steal 15 kilos of cocaine.
Jurors could begin deliberating the case today or Monday.
Carlton spent much of Wednesday pulling together threads of circumstantial evidence that put Troya and Sanchez along the same stretch of Florida's Turnpike as the Escobedos at the time they were killed. Among them were toll receipts with Troya and Sanchez's fingerprints that appear to link them to the crime scene, cellphone records from the night of the murders, and a suitcase that matched a set of suitcases belonging to the Escobedos later found in a van linked to the scene.
Carlton also reminded jurors that a gun expert matched ammunition from the Briar Bay home where the four defendants lived to the crime scene.
"The reason for that is that's where the killers lived," Carlton said.
Varela's attorney, Robert Gershman, tried to separate Varela from the killings, saying prosecutors tried to "bootstrap" Troya and Sanchez's charges to him by saying he was the boss. Gershman and Troya's attorney, Ruben Garcia, attacked Troya's childhood friend and government star witness Kevin Vetere, who's serving a 12-year prison term after pleading guilty to working with Varela's crew.
Garcia called the story of Vetere, a one-time baseball star, "a true Greek tragedy." Gershman wasn't as kind.
"Mr. Vetere is testifying like a well-trained crackhead, feeding the government whatever it needs for the case," he said.
Sanchez's attorney, Michael Cohen, and Lopez's attorney, Gregg Lerman, are expected to present their closing arguments today.
Subscribe to TCoastTalk's RSS Feed
Browse the photo galleries here
