Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast
Results 1 to 10 of 12

Thread: Skylar Julius Deleon (aka Skylar Preciosa Maciel) (aka John Julius Jacobson) - California Death Row

  1. #1
    Guest
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    5,534

    Skylar Julius Deleon (aka Skylar Preciosa Maciel) (aka John Julius Jacobson) - California Death Row


    Skylar Julius Deleon


    Summary of Offense:

    Sentenced to death in Orange County on April 16, 2009 in the murders of Thomas and Jackie Hawks off the coast of Catalina Island in November 2004, and for the separate murder-for-money slaying of Jon Peter Jarvi, 45, of Anaheim, in December 2003. Deleon was convicted in November of murdering the Hawkses after forcing them to sign sales documents for their 55-foot yacht, the Well Deserved. The couple were then tied to an anchor and thrown overboard. Their bodies have never been recovered. He was also convicted of slashing Jarvi's throat on December 27, 2003, a day after Jarvi turned over $50,000 in cash after Deleon promised him a can't-miss investment opportunity in Mexico.

    John Fitzgerald Kennedy was also sentenced to death for the Hawks murders. For more on Kennedy, see: http://www.cncpunishment.com/forums/...rnia-Death-Row

  2. #2
    Guest
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    5,534
    April 10, 2009

    SANTA ANA, Calif. - A man convicted of murdering an Arizona couple by tying them to an anchor and throwing them overboard from their yacht off Southern California was sentenced to death Friday.

    Orange County Superior Court Judge Frank F. Fasel imposed the sentence recommended by the jury that convicted Skylar Deleon, 29, of killing Tom and Jackie Hawks of Prescott, Ariz. DeLeon, who appeared in a "Power Rangers" TV series and starred in commercials, was also convicted in the 2003 killing of Jon Jarvi, an Anaheim man he met on a work furlough program.

    Former child actor Skylar Deleon was sentenced to death Friday for murdering an Arizona couple as part of a plot to steal their yacht and plunder their life savings. Deleon, 29, here in 2006, starred in commercials and appeared in the television series 'Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.' He was convicted in the deaths in October, along with a third, unrelated murder.

    "It is the judgment and order of this court you shall suffer the death penalty as to each count," Fasel said, adding that he decided to impose the penalty partly because of the horrific nature of the murders.

    Prosecutors said Deleon, of Long Beach, feigned interest in buying the couple's nearly half-million-dollar yacht and threw them overboard during a test cruise out of Newport Harbor in 2004. The Hawkses' bodies were never found.

    They said Deleon and his then-wife, Jennifer Henderson, crafted the plan to kill the Hawkses to steal their boat and savings. After the yacht killings, prosecutors said, Deleon and Henderson scrubbed the boat clean with bleach wipes.

    "It is difficult to imagine a case where it's more cold-blooded and calculated than this series of murders," prosecutor Matt Murphy said after the sentencing. "I can't imagine a situation that is more deserving of the ultimate punishment."

    Defense attorney Gary Pohlson had asked jurors to spare his client's life, arguing that Deleon was abused by a drug-dealing father who left him predisposed to violence. He declined to comment after the sentencing. Deleon's case will automatically go to an appeal.

    Henderson was convicted in 2006 of murder and murder for financial gain and was sentenced to two terms of life in prison without parole. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, one of two men accused of helping Deleon in the plot, was also convicted in the murders earlier this year and a jury has recommended the death penalty when he is sentenced in May.

    Murder charges against Myron Gardner, the other man, were dismissed when he pleaded guilty last month to accessory after the fact. Alonso Machain, who testified that he and Kennedy were on the boat with Deleon on the day of the killings, also faced murder charges.

    Ryan Hawks, Tom Hawks's son, said he hoped that Deleon's two children would never know what their father did or that he used his young daughter to help win the trust of the Arizona couple.

    "No one wants to know they were used as decoys or fakes to murder my parents," Hawks said after the sentencing.

    http://news.aol.com/article/child-ac...com%2Farticle%

  3. #3
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    Related

    A Killer of Newport Beach Couple Tied To Yacht Anchor & Thrown Overboard Wins Legal Point

    The Ninth Circuit federal appellate court today handed a legal victory of sorts to the lone woman involved in the gruesome 2004 murder at sea of Thomas and Jackie Hawks in hopes of stealing the couple's 55-foot, Newport Beach-based yacht.

    The panel ruled that U.S. District Court Judge Philip S. Gutierrez improperly dismissed a 2011 appeal by Jennifer Lynn Henderson (AKA Jennifer DeLeon), and they ordered her complaint of a tainted trial and conviction reinstated.

    Henderson is serving two consecutive life sentences without the possibility for parole for her role in the notorious crime that ended with the Hawks, a retired couple, tied to their yacht's anchor and tossed overboard alive in the Pacific Ocean off the California coast.

    Sklyar DeLeon--Henderson's onetime husband, a former Mighty Morphin Power Rangers actor and mastermind of the crime--received the death penalty in Orange County Superior Court after acclaimed homicide prosecutor Matt Murphy and Newport Beach Police Department detectives presented their overwhelming evidence.

    (Two hoodlums--Alonso Machain and John Kennedy--were also convicted in the case that received widespread national TV attention.)

    Henderson's complaints about her convictions include: introduction of inadmissible evidence, due process violations, prosecutorial errors and faulty jury instructions by Judge Frank F. Fasel, who has since retired.

    Justices at the California Court of Appeal based in Santa Ana have already considered and rejected most of Henderson's complaints.

    The 31-year-old killer, who was convicted by a jury in 2007, is presently residing inside the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla.

    http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazin...wks_deleon.php
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  4. #4
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    Related

    Killer of Newport Beach Yacht Owners Tossed Overboard Fights Her Conviction

    For helping her husband execute a 2004 murder plot that resulted in Thomas and Jackie Hawks being secured to an anchor on their Newport Beach-based yacht and tossed overboard alive in the Pacific Ocean, hairdresser Jennifer Deleon received two life sentences without the possibility for parole.

    However, Deleon, who now goes by the name Jennifer Lynn Henderson following a divorce, refuses to concede her guilt.

    Henderson has told a federal judge that the evidence against her was weak, an accomplice gave false testimony in exchange for sentencing leniency, a state appellate court wrongly ignored her claims and the prosecutor committed repeated misconduct in his successful 2006, closing argument at the trial inside Orange County Superior Court.

    But this month, U.S. District Court Judge Philip S. Gutierrez accepted a magistrate judge's recommendation and report that concluded all of Henderson's legal claims lacked merit and noted the "substantial" evidence of her key involvement in the horrific crime.

    Gutierrez also refused to grant her a certificate that would allow her to appeal his findings.

    At the time of the murder, Henderson and her husband, Skylar Deleon--a onetime Mighty Morphin Power Rangers actor, were in dire financial straits and devised a plan to pretend to buy the Hawkses' $465,000 yacht in hopes of boarding the 55-foot boat, killing the couple and back-dating sale documents to take ownership.

    According to prosecutor Matt Murphy, Henderson used her pregnant condition to aid her husband in creating the illusion that they were decent people who sincerely wanted to buy the yacht from the retired couple.

    Murphy and Newport Beach Police Department homicide detectives also gathered overwhelming evidence of Henderson's role before, during and after the killings.

    The Hawkses' bodies were never recovered.

    As the mastermind, Deleon, 33, is spending the rest of his life incarcerated while he awaits state execution on San Quentin State Prison's notorious death row.

    http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazin...fer_deleon.php
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  5. #5
    Member Member giallohunter's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2013
    Location
    Hanko, Finland
    Posts
    84
    Documentary available on CBS for online streaming about this case.

    Dark Voyage

    In Full: Good and evil intersect in the waters off Newport Beach, Calif. Maureen Maher reports.

  6. #6
    Pal.jpg
    The photo with murderabilia dealer William Harder, a platonic friend, was taken earlier this year and soon posted on Facebook.

    2009.jpg
    Skylar Deleon 2009

    2014.jpg
    Skylar Deleon 2014


    August 27, 2015

    Should California Taxpayers Pay for a Killer’s Sex Change?

    Sitting in a grid-like maze of locked metal cages at San Quentin State Prison, I’m surrounded by killers casually eating lunch and talking. I feel anxious and unsettled as I wait in Cage No. 7 for one of Orange County’s most notorious murderers to be brought down from the new psychiatric unit.

    The correctional officer leads a groggy and puffy-eyed Skylar Deleon into the cage and uncuffs her hands. I’m not shocked by the transgender inmate’s new, more feminine appearance; I’ve already seen photos of her smiling and posing with a male visitor on Facebook and hardly recognized her.

    Although she isn’t wearing the eye makeup and lip gloss from the photo, the heavy beard stubble I saw the last time we talked, in 2009, is gone, the result of the hormones and testosterone-blockers she takes. Her short masculine haircut also has grown long enough for her to wear a side ponytail that hangs below her small breasts.

    We say a quick hello, and before we get started, I buy her a quesadilla and two avocados out of the vending machines, which gives me a few minutes to settle into this surreal scene. Our last interview was at the men’s county jail in Santa Ana, just before she was sentenced to death for tying Tom and Jackie Hawks to the anchor of their yacht off Newport Beach in 2004 and throwing them overboard—alive. We met four times over two weekends, during which Skylar listed all the mental health diagnoses and medications the doctors had given her. We also talked about her attempt to slice off her penis with a disposable razor, which landed her in a community hospital.
    Skylar Deleon arrived at San Quentin’s death row in 2009 with a heavy beard, but by July 2014 the effects of her hormone treatments were obvious.

    My visit this May was prompted by a federal judge’s ruling ordering the state of California to provide sexual reassignment surgery to a transgender female inmate housed at the men’s Mule Creek State Prison. A transgender inmate housed in San Diego who has been denied the surgery also has filed a lawsuit in federal court. Those cases might trigger new claims by inmates such as Skylar Deleon—because there are a surprising number of inmates like her.

    I’d hoped to talk to Skylar about her hopes for getting the surgery now that the courts had opened this legal door. I wanted to hear about her life on death row and in the psych unit that opened in October. And I wondered if she’d say she felt any remorse for the murders that put her here. So we exchanged letters, and she put me on her visitor’s list. She wanted to talk face-to-face.

    During our 2½-hour conversation, she seems calmer and, frankly, more lucid than I’ve ever seen her. Unfortunately, I can’t reveal her answers to my questions. At the request of her attorney—who objected by letter after the interview and discussed his concerns with an Orange Coast lawyer—I must tell this story through my own observations and other sources, because he maintains Skylar doesn’t have the legal capacity to consent to an interview (and neither does he).

    I notice that Skylar no longer has body hair, and that she’s wearing women’s socks and a sky-blue top over her bra.

    I also see her sneakers are laced up with a plastic bag rather than shoelaces, which inmates sometimes use to hang themselves. Finally, I see that the pale skin of her forearm is scarred by a series of vertical reddish-brown welts. My sources tell me she has frequently cut herself with razors and otherwise harmed herself over the years, resulting in multiple trips to a state mental health facility in Vacaville, as well as to the prison’s acute-care unit.

    “She ran full force into a metal door and knocked herself out, every other week, just to get attention and to get up on the fourth floor, the medical crisis-bed unit, to get people to talk to her and to talk to them,” a correctional officer tells me, asking to remain anonymous for fear of losing the prison job.

    But these days, Skylar seems to be doing better than she has for some time.

    “She’s in good spirits. Last time we talked she seemed real happy,” says William Harder, the friend of Skylar’s and murderabilia dealer who posted Facebook photos of himself with Skylar after one of their regular visits. “She’s not down, or hurting herself, or talking about hurting herself. She seems to be … listening to her doctors and doing the program they’ve set forth for her.”

    As soon as the federal ruling was issued this April, Skylar began talking about pursuing state-funded surgery for herself. But this is hardly a new quest; she has wanted such an operation for more than 20 years. Unknown to many people who followed the Hawks case, Skylar’s need to pay for the surgery was a primary motive for murdering the couple.

    At this point, you might be spitting out your coffee as you consider Skylar’s quest for state-funded surgery and thinking, “Not with my tax dollars!” And you certainly wouldn’t be alone. Some people, including Jackie Hawks’s mother, believe that once a person kills another human being, that person should lose all civil rights, including the right to be treated humanely.

    “Oh my God, I’m sorry, this world has gone to hell in a handbasket. I can’t believe that,” Gayle O’Neill says when I recount my visit with Skylar. “Why don’t they just put her in the (death chamber) … and do what they said they were going to do? My daughter is gone and she didn’t get to do what she wanted to do with the rest of her life, and Tom, either. Why should (Skylar) get to do what he wants to do?”

    David Byington, the now-retired Newport Beach police sergeant who worked the Hawks case for five years, has a similar reaction. “He/she is a coward and does an injustice to those people who are actually suffering with the daily challenges of gender-identity issues,” Byington says, adding that after killing three people, Skylar, “the murderer, doesn’t deserve the political correctness (or respect) to be called ‘she.’ ”

    I don’t much like the idea of my tax dollars going toward relieving a killer’s emotional pain, either. But the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits “deliberate indifference” to the medical needs of inmates—even death-row killers such as Skylar—and requires that they receive “adequate medical care.”

    This complicated legal debate has been raging not just in California courts, but also in Massachusetts and Georgia, making it a hotly contested national issue. While one case was pending U.S. Supreme Court review, the U.S. Justice Department weighed in on another, advocating for transgender inmate rights.

    “Failure to provide individualized and appropriate medical care for inmates suffering from gender dysphoria violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment,” the department wrote in February on behalf of a transgender female inmate who sued Georgia’s prison system. “Gender dysphoria is a serious medical condition for which treatment is necessary and effective.”

    The primary battle has revolved around the question of whether such surgery—typically to remove the penis and testicles and build a vagina—is “medically necessary” to relieve inmates’ emotional and physical pain, or if hormone therapy and counseling alone are “adequate.”

    These prison lawsuits have been unfolding against the backdrop of an escalating gender-identity discussion that has grabbed our attention for much of this year, thanks to Olympic athlete Bruce, now Caitlyn, Jenner. As she transitioned publicly and in real time, she raised awareness and high emotions around the world. We watched her talk and cry as Bruce on prime-time television about her lifelong hardships and her goal to help other transgender people find the courage to stop living a lie amid bigotry. Then we saw her debut her new identity as Caitlyn on Vanity Fair’s July cover, exploding across social media with full breasts and long hair, wearing red lipstick and a satin corset. Her reality TV show “I Am Cait” launched in July.

    That series of events brought the transgender conversation out of the shadows and into the mainstream media, sparking questions about acceptance and compassion, the proper terms and pronouns to use, and confusion over the differences between gender identity and sexual orientation, which are separate and unrelated issues. There also has been discussion about the treatment choices of some transgender women, including Jenner, who say they can still feel feminine with their penises intact.

    Which brings us to the topic at hand. Should a convicted killer, especially one on death row, be granted such a remedy to relieve pain and suffering—a costly operation that many law-abiding citizens on the outside can’t afford? Especially if that convicted killer committed murder to pay for it?

    I didn’t sleep much before my first interview with Skylar in 2009, worrying I might say something that compelled her to put a hit out on me, as she tried to do—from jail—on her father and cousin to keep them from testifying against her. But she never seemed upset by my questions and seemed to enjoy talking about her attempt to cut off her penis in jail, recounting how she didn’t get as far as she wanted because she only had time to cut around the base. As we chatted, she giggled and sang “That’s Amore” to me.

    Despite Skylar’s disarmingly gentle and high-pitched voice, I know too well the horrors she has caused. A year before murdering the Newport Beach couple, when Skylar was serving time for armed burglary, she took $50,000 from cellmate Jon Jarvi for some scheme, then cut Jarvi’s throat and left him to bleed out on a roadside in Mexico, all while on work furlough from the Seal Beach jail for the day. Returning two hours past curfew that night, she used part of the spoils to buy herself an anal sex machine from the jail’s computer. Skylar was convicted of all three murders.

    I didn’t sleep much the night before my visit this year, either. I also hesitated before bringing her a plastic fork-spoon and knife to eat the vending machine food I bought her for $9.50 in quarters. (Buying food for an inmate is a customary practice when visiting, because it’s better tasting than what they normally get, and they aren’t allowed to touch money.)

    Yet, as I sit across from the new Skylar, this more effeminate killer seems more at ease and less threatening than before—even without the protective barrier between us that we’d had in Santa Ana.

    Skylar already told me that she has identified as female since childhood but was forced to live a lie for many years. She previously recalled a harsh scolding by her father, former U.S. Marine “Big John” Jacobson, after he discovered young Skylar was dressing up with the neighborhood girls and wearing mascara. “You want to be a girl? I’ll treat you like a girl!” yelled the man for whom Skylar was originally named John “Johnny” Jacobson Jr.

    Big John, who threw Skylar down the stairs and shoved toothpicks under her nails after she bit them, spent time in federal prison for drug trafficking. When he got out, Skylar told me years ago, he forced her into being a child actor. Skylar had a pretty face even then, landing some commercials and a couple of non-speaking roles in the Saturday morning kids’ show “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” during the 1993-94 season. But looking back, she said, she always hated the work and never got to keep the money she made.

    Skylar carried her father’s name until just before she started dating Jennifer Henderson in Long Beach in 2002, when she went to court to formally change it to the gender-neutral Skylar Deleon. At the time, only Jennifer knew about Skylar’s desire for the surgery; Jennifer’s parents, faithful evangelical Christians, wouldn’t have understood.

    Skylar loved Jennifer so much she married her in two ceremonies before they had a daughter, Haylie, whom Skylar and her pregnant wife later brought on board the Well Deserved in a stroller to gain the trust of the Hawkses. Pretending the Deleons wanted to buy the yacht, Skylar and two cohorts asked the unwitting couple to take them out for an open-ocean trial run. The Hawkses were never seen again.

    Skylar has been categorized by state officials as transgender, but privacy laws prevent them from discussing individual inmates’ medical issues in detail. While Skylar’s psychosexual background, gender identity, and mental health issues didn’t play a role in the prosecution’s case, she did draw media attention for coming to a pretrial hearing wearing a women’s jail jumpsuit and makeshift mascara, and later for looking increasingly frail and effeminate.

    I dove into these topics after Byington, the Newport Beach detective, told me part of Skylar’s motive for killing the Hawkses was to get money to pay for a sexual-reassignment operation she’d scheduled for two weeks after the murders, in November 2004.

    At the time, Skylar and her wife were deeply in debt and living in Jennifer’s parents’ converted garage in Long Beach. Skylar already had put down a $500 deposit with a Colorado doctor to get the operation; she couldn’t cover the $15,000 balance. Skylar and Jennifer came up with a scheme to pay for Skylar’s operation and settle some sizeable debts by killing the Hawkses, stealing their boat, and pillaging their bank accounts.

    A correctional officer recalls that when Skylar heard about the ground-breaking court ruling in April, she was visibly excited and shared her renewed hopes with prison staff.

    “I saw on the news that a trans inmate at Mule Creek is getting surgery,” the officer recalls Skylar saying. “This is great, because this means now I can get my surgery.”

    She also discussed the development with her friend Harder and asked him to send her news reports so she could learn more. “It’s obviously a relief for Skylar because she’d planned to pay for the sex change operation herself. Now, apparently, this changes the game a bit,” Harder says. “(Skylar) has told me she feels trapped. She identifies with the opposite sex (to which) she was born.” (Skylar has been engaged to two different women since she has been on death row; her current fiancee reportedly has offered to pay the basic surgery costs.)

    But as with everything else in this story, this is more complicated than it seems. So far, no inmate has had the surgery while in custody in California, where 385 transgender inmates are taking hormones; all but 22 of them are in men’s prisons. Nationwide, officials know of only one inmate—now in California—who has had the procedure done while behind bars in Texas.

    The Transgender Law Center—which represents Michelle-Lael (Jeffrey) Norsworthy, the Mule Creek inmate who in April was granted the right to state-subsidized surgery by a federal judge—argues that the state’s “blanket” policy to deny such operations to transgender inmates is unconstitutional.

    “No one should be denied the medical care they need,” said Kris Hayashi, the center’s executive director, in a written statement. “There is a clear medical consensus that health care related to gender transition is necessary—and lifesaving—for many people. This decision confirms that it’s unlawful to deny essential treatment to transgender people.”

    State officials say the Transgender Law Center is mischaracterizing the state’s policy. In late May, Joyce Hayhoe, a spokeswoman for the receivership agency overseeing medical care in California prisons, said: “Under our regulations we are not allowed to perform surgery that is not medically necessary, so that is what the argument is right now before the court.”

    In general, one of the prerequisites for a transgender woman to have the surgery is a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, which Skylar has received. Others are to “present” as a woman for a number of years, which means dressing and acting like one, being on female hormones, and receiving intensive psychological therapy. Although Skylar seems to have met these basic prerequisites, she apparently lacks the state’s “medically necessary” recommendation.

    Complicating matters is that prisoners must have surgery at a community hospital, where they must be guarded around the clock by at least two state correctional officers. Hayhoe says the total cost would vary depending on an inmate’s needs, but with security, hormones, evaluations, counseling, and follow-up care, it could reach as high as $100,000.

    “It’s more than one procedure” and likely “more than one visit to the hospital,” Hayhoe says. In general, she adds, inmates may pay privately for some types of procedures, but they would still have to be approved based on security concerns.

    With nearly 750 condemned men and women in California today, and no executions since a moratorium was issued in 2006, the chances of Skylar living out her natural life are pretty high.

    And, like it or not, says Skylar’s friend Harder, “when you put a person in prison you have to agree to take care of them. That’s what the law says. You have to feed them, clothe them, you have to give them medical care. … This is America, and we’re guaranteed certain liberties here.”

    As he also points out, we don’t always get to choose how our tax dollars are spent. “I firmly oppose the death penalty,” he says. “Why should I have to help pay for a new death chamber?” If you really don’t want your tax dollars used for sexual reassignment surgery for inmates, he says, then maybe “you should move to a country where they put people like that to death. Then you won’t have to worry about it anymore.”

    Source

    Related

    July 12, 2008

    Accused killer attempts to sever own penis in O.C. jail

    By David Reyes
    The Los Angeles Times

    Skylar Deleon, charged with murdering an Arizona couple at sea, tried to cut off his penis with a razor blade while in Orange County Men's Central Jail awaiting trial, sheriff's officials said Friday.

    Deleon, 29, was hospitalized after the March 13 incident. His penis was reattached and he was returned to jail the next day, said Damon Micalizzi, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff's Department.

    "Somehow he got a hold of a razor blade and tried to saw off his penis, but didn't complete the job," Micalizzi said.

    Jail officials don't know how Deleon got the razor, which could have been taken into the jail, Micalizzi said. Hand razors are provided to inmates for shaving but they are modified to prevent the blades from being removed, he said.

    "We do know there was a lot of blood and it was quite a scene. But from what I know, he didn't finish his task, and maybe it was too painful and that made him stop," Micalizzi said.

    At the time, Deleon was in a mental health ward at the jail in Santa Ana. He did not have a cellmate.

    Deleon's trial is set for Aug. 25.

    Prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty against Deleon for the 2004 murders of Jackie and Thomas Hawks of Prescott, Ariz.

    The couple, trying to sell their yacht, took Deleon and three other men on a test cruise of their 55-foot yacht off the Southern California coast, authorities have said.

    Prosecutors said Deleon and the others forced the couple to sign transfer-of-title and power-of-attorney documents, then chained them to an anchor and tossed them overboard, alive, off Newport Beach. They are presumed to have drowned. Their bodies have not been found.

    Deleon's wife, Jennifer, was convicted in the crime. She was sentenced in October to two consecutive life terms in prison without the possibility of parole for participating in the plot to kill the retired couple.

    Source
    Last edited by GregFromSanJose; 06-24-2016 at 02:41 AM.

  7. #7
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    13,014
    Public defender raises questions about Skylar Deleon double-murder case

    By TONY SAAVEDRA
    The Orange County Register

    The public defender who has helped raise awareness about the illegal use of jailhouse informants in Orange County is raising new questions about one of the most high-profile court cases in county history, the 2008 conviction of double-murderer Skylar Deleon.

    But while the actions highlighted by Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders indicate the possibility of bad faith by a local prosecutor, transcripts in the 85-page motion filed Wednesday also can be read to support the argument that the prosecutor in Deleon did nothing wrong.

    The legal wrangling is part of Sanders’ ongoing defense of convicted murderer Daniel Wozniak, who last year was sentenced to death for the 2010 killing of Samuel Herr and Julie Kibuishi. Sanders is asking the judge in the Wozniak case, John Conley, to save all evidence in the case because, in Sanders’ view, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office can’t be trusted to keep the evidence for use in any future appeal. Prosecutors deny that allegation. Judge Conley is expected to consider the matter on May 19.

    To make his argument against the county, Sanders wrote that Senior Deputy District Attorney Matt Murphy, who prosecuted both Wozniak and Deleon, “defrauded” the Deleon jury that sentenced him to death for throwing a married couple, Thomas and Jackie Hawks, off their 55-foot yacht while they were tied to an anchor.

    Sanders said Murphy used a jailhouse witness, three-strike convict Daniel Elias, to testify that while they shared a jail cell Deleon offered to pay him to kill a pair of potential witnesses.

    Murphy, transcripts show, assured the jury that Elias “got nothing” for testifying against Deleon, meaning Elias’ testimony came without any promise of a shortened sentence or any other consideration.

    “That man, ladies and gentlemen, came in here with his waist chains on, on his way to prison, and he testified anyway. And, that is extraordinary,” Murphy told Deleon’s jury. “He got nothing from it.”

    But two months later, Murphy — also serving as prosecutor of Elias — asked the judge to consider Elias’ testimony against Deleon when sentencing him for felony drug and gun charges.

    “At the time that Mr. Elias testified, he did so without any promises,” Murphy told Judge Thomas Borris. “There was never a wink, never a nod, an understanding between me and the defense that Mr. Elias would receive anything for his cooperation.”

    Murphy continued: “He put his money where his mouth is, so to speak. He testified without any of that. I believe he was sincere. He was tremendously helpful to the People’s case, I believe, and I believe that he essentially put his life at risk by doing that.

    “So, based on what he did, at this point I would ask the court to take into consideration in determining (the) appropriate sentence.”

    Though Elias faced eight years in prison, Borris set Elias free, saying his time served, four years in Orange County Jail, was punishment enough.

    Murphy denied the allegations.

    “What Sanders is saying is categorically false in every respect, and we can prove it,” Murphy said.

    “What Sanders is saying is categorically false in every respect, and we can prove it,” Murphy said. “Everyone understands Wozniak was a stinging defeat for Mr. Sanders, but he shouldn’t be wasting precious county resources… He needs to move on.”

    Sanders argues that the transcripts show Murphy was disingenuous when he told the Deleon jury that Elias was testifying without compensation, even though as prosecutor in Elias’ case he could later urge the judge for a lighter sentence.

    “Jurors never knew the real reason why for more than two years Elias had been continuing his sentence until after he testified against Deleon,” Sanders wrote in the brief.

    Sanders’ brief does not comment on the idea that the transcript shows Murphy’s statements in both the Deleon trial and the Elias sentencing are consistent, in that he didn’t offer anything to Elias for the testimony.

    But such cooperation between prosecutors and defendants isn’t always stated, according to legal experts. Instead, it’s sometimes understood that a convict awaiting sentencing might, in some circumstances, behave in a way that can reduce that sentence. Testimony against another inmate in a high profile case such as the Deleon trial might qualify as such a circumstance.

    It’s also unclear why Murphy, who typically prosecutes homicides, took over the Elias case while he was also prosecuting Deleon.

    Lawrence Rosenthal, a professor at Dale E. Fowler School of Law at Chapman University, said based on the limited transcripts, Murphy should have told the jury in the Deleon case that he planned to relate Elias’ cooperation to the judge in that case.

    “Having the prosecutor tell the judge how much he helped the case, that’s not (getting) ‘nothing,'” Rosenthal said. “It does create an incentive for the witness to try to please the prosecutor.”

    Sanders allegation against Murphy is the latest twist in the four-year battle over the withholding of evidence and the use of jailhouse informants by Orange County prosecutors and police. The U.S. Department of Justice, the state Attorney General’s Office and the Orange County Grand Jury are investigating, and the Fourth District Court of Appeal wrote that the county engages in “systemic” misuse of informants and withholding of evidence.

    A judge also removed the Orange County District Attorney’s Office from the penalty trial of Scott Dekraai, who pleaded guilty to killing eight and injuring one in a shooting rampage at a Seal Beach salon in 2011.

    Deleon and his four accomplices were arrested in 2004 for pretending to buy the Hawks’ yacht, throwing them overboard during a test run off Catalina Island. Deleon used his pregnant wife to lull the couple into lowering their guard.

    After his arrest, Deleon and Elias were housed together in a county jail cell equipped with recording devices, according to Sanders’ brief.

    Elias told authorities that Deleon offered him millions of dollars to kill two witnesses, a scuba instructor and a notary. Elias reached out to police and prosecutors, but was repeatedly told that he would get nothing for his information, records say.

    Elias finally agreed to testify against Deleon at the behest of a deputy jailer. But Elias asked the district attorney’s office to lower his sentence in exchange for information on an unrelated case.

    Elias claimed in legal documents that Murphy also promised he would get back the $2,628 that was taken from him at the time of arrest. The money was forfeited under state law.

    Elias has been unsuccessful in his numerous attempts to recover the cash.

    http://www.ocregister.com/2017/05/11...r-murder-case/

  8. #8
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JLR's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2011
    Posts
    2,740
    Deleon filed his opening brief on direct appeal on the 30th of December 2016.

    The prosecution filed its response on the 11th of May 2018.

    https://appellatecases.courtinfo.ca....NRMCAgCg%3D%3D
    Last edited by JLR; 01-23-2019 at 10:33 PM.

  9. #9
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    13,014
    Deleon's direct appeal has been fully briefed before the California Supreme Court since June 3, 2019.

    https://appellatecases.courtinfo.ca....NRMCAgCg%3D%3D

  10. #10
    Senior Member CnCP Addict maybeacomedian's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2014
    Location
    IL
    Posts
    657
    This is one of the worst, most inhumane, and most well-planned murders I've ever known of. Too bad he'll never be executed since it's California. Reminds me of the Oba Chandler muders in FL. Binding & drowning people alive in the middle of the ocean while they are fully-conscious. That is truly evil.

Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Tags for this Thread

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •