Attorneys allege bias in Hispanic man's case
Say Stafford office should not be able to seek death penalty

Friday, Oct 19, 2007 - 12:08 AM

By KIRAN KRISHNAMURTHY
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
STAFFORD -- Attorneys for an alleged Latino gang member accuse Stafford County prosecutors of racial and gender discrimination in seeking the death penalty for the illegal immigrant.

Citing cases dating to 1990, lawyers for Jose Santos Portillo-Chicas allege that the office of Stafford Commonwealth's Attorney Daniel M. Chichester "values white life far more highly than life of minorities."

The defense is asking that a judge bar prosecutors from seeking the death penalty in the case of Portillo-Chicas, the accused triggerman in the killing of a young woman in July 2006. Authorities allege Portillo-Chicas, 31, is a member of the MS-13 street gang.

A hearing is scheduled for Thursday, and the defense has subpoenaed Chichester to testify.

In their motion, defense lawyers Joseph T. Flood and Allen Bareford cite a study by the Northern Virginia Capital Defenders Office that shows Chichester's office since 1990 has sought the death penalty in only four of 13 death-eligible cases and that three of those cases involved male, minority defendants. Each of those three cases, including Portillo-Chicas' case, involved the killing of a white female.

In the lone death-penalty case involving a white male defendant, the defense asserts, prosecutors agreed to drop the death penalty in exchange for the cooperation of the defendant, LeRoy Bullock, who was charged with killing two white women in Stafford. In all, Bullock killed seven people in Virginia, Arkansas and Tennessee in the late 1980s.

Portillo-Chicas' lawyers say Stafford prosecutors effectively rewarded Bullock for his serial criminal behavior, but that prosecutors have refused to entertain Portillo-Chicas' offer to plead guilty in exchange for prosecutors dropping the death penalty.

Chichester's refusal to negotiate is a "conscious or unconscious result of racial prejudice against Mr. Portillo-Chicas, an Hispanic man, either as a result of Mr. Portillo-Chicas' race or the race and gender of the victim," the lawyers wrote in the motion filed Wednesday.

Efforts to reach Chichester at his office and at home yesterday were unsuccessful.

Jim Peterson, one of three prosecutors involved in the case, declined to comment on the allegations in the motion, except to say, "Mr. Chichester is one of the most respected commonwealth attorneys in the commonwealth of Virginia."

Efforts to reach Flood and Bareford were unsuccessful yesterday.

The defense attorneys also allege women, minorities and young people have been underrepresented in grand jury proceedings. In a separate motion, they say Stafford Circuit Court Clerk Barbara G. Decatur hand-picks grand jurors and that she knows the race of many of them beforehand. Several of the grand jurors have served multiple times during the span of a few years and include several members of the county Board of Supervisors, according to the motion.

Decatur said yesterday that she had not yet seen the motion and therefore would not comment.

The defense also is again asking the judge in the case, Stafford Circuit Judge J. Martin Bass, to recuse himself because Bass approved the grand jury selection method.

Portillo-Chicas, also known as Little Blue, is scheduled to be tried for capital murder starting Dec. 3 in the slaying of 21-year-old Shannah Marie Angeles. Two other defendants have pleaded guilty, with one of them sentenced to 18 years in prison and the other to 30 years in prison. A third defendant has not yet been tried, and a fourth suspect, Henry Mejivar, 18, has not been arrested.

Investigators believe the suspects thought Angeles, who was visiting from the Chicago area, was a member of a rival gang. Authorities have said they do not know if she was a rival gang member.

MS-13 is the shorthand name for Mara Salvatrucha, a gang with a documented presence in Northern Virginia. MS-13 took root during the 1980s in Los Angeles as Salvadorans fled their country's civil war. The name is Salvadoran slang: "mara" for posse and "salvatrucha" for street-tough Salvadoran. Portillo-Chicas is in the U.S. illegally, prosecutors say, but some of the other defendants are legal residents.

www.inrich.com

Here is some background on this story. Didn't just add to the old thread because a couple other threads were done too re this sad story:
http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-38895-shan ... ie+angeles