Thread: NJ: Lawyers seek death-penalty ban in double murder

Lawyers seek death-penalty ban

Man charged with killing boys
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 08/1/07
BY KATHLEEN HOPKINS
TOMS RIVER BUREAU

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TOMS RIVER — Attorneys are attempting to bar the state from seeking the death penalty against an illegal immigrant accused of killing two young brothers from Stafford with a claw hammer last year.

Attorneys Michael Priarone and Cathy L. Waldor filed a motion in state Superior Court, Ocean County, on Tuesday contending the state should be barred from seeking the death penalty against their client, Richard Toledo, now 22, on the grounds that New Jersey's death-penalty law is unconstitutional.

Priarone and Waldor filed another motion Tuesday seeking to suppress statements Toledo made to authorities after his arrest in connection with the murders of Karlo Gonzalez, 14, and his brother, Zabdiel Gonzalez, 7, in their Stafford home on Jan. 19, 2006.

That motion did not specify what Toledo said to authorities after he was arrested in the early morning on the day following the murders or on what grounds they were seeking to have his statements suppressed. Priarone said he could not comment on the case.

First Assistant Ocean County Prosecutor Ronald F. DeLigny also would not elaborate on what Toledo said to authorities. He said the motions are under review and, despite the defense attorneys' citation that a commission has recommended that the state's death-penalty statute be abolished, that law is still in effect.

No hearings on the motions have been scheduled. Superior Court Judge Barbara Ann Villano is presiding over the case. Toledo is tentatively scheduled to stand trial in January.

Last year, an Ocean County grand jury returned an indictment against Toledo citing aggravating factors that enable the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office to seek the death penalty against Toledo, a Mexican immigrant who was a boarder in the Gonzalez home when the boys were killed.

The aggravating factors that the grand jury found present were that the murders were committed to escape detection, apprehension or punishment for another crime, that they were committed during the commission of or flight from another crime and, in the case of Zabdiel Gonzalez, that the victim was younger than 14.

In addition to two counts of capital murder, the grand jury charged Toledo in the indictment with kidnapping the mother of the murder victims, Wanda Gonzalez, robbing her at knifepoint, carjacking her in her 1999 Dodge Caravan, and possessing two deadly weapons — a knife and claw hammer.

In their motion seeking to bar a death-penalty prosecution, Priarone and Waldor contend that there are so many aggravating factors that can be considered to bring a capital case against a defendant that there is nothing to distinguish a death-penalty case from one in which the death penalty is not sought.

Kathleen Hopkins: (732) 557-5732 or khopkins@app.com

http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/articl ... 10369/1070

I remember this story last year. Horrifying.

I would like to here his excuse for killing these innocent victims.

The mother took in this illegal alien as a boarder too.

Don't invite touble and heartache into your home. She should of known better.