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Thread: Joel Randu Escalante-Orozco - Arizona

  1. #1
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    Joel Randu Escalante-Orozco - Arizona




    Man gets the death sentence in 2001 murder case

    A man convicted of sexually assaulting and killing a Phoenix woman in 2001 has been given the death sentence.

    Maricopa County prosecutors say jurors deliberated four days before voting unanimously Thursday to give 38-year-old Joel Escalante Orozco the death penalty.

    He was convicted in January of first-degree murder, burglary and sexual assault.

    Authorities say Orozco fled to Mexico after the killing of Maria Garza-Rivera in her apartment and was arrested six years later in Idaho.

    Garza-Rivera was discovered dead in her bathtub with water running from both the showerhead and faucet on March 10, 2001.

    Authorities say Orozco lived at the same apartment complex and was employed to perform general labor and maintenance.

    They say at the time of the murder, Orozco had been remodeling the unit occupied by Garza-Rivera.

    http://ktar.com/22/1614287/Man-gets-...01-murder-case
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    STATE OF ARIZONA v JOEL RANDU ESCALANTE-OROZCO

    In the today's Arizona Supreme Court opinions, the court AFFIRMED Escalante Orozco’s convictions and non-death sentences. To comply with the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Lynch v. Arizona, 136 S. Ct. 1818 (2016) the court vacated the death sentence and remanded for a new penalty phase.
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  3. #3
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Death sentence thrown out for man convicted in 2001 killing

    By Jacques Billeaud
    The Associated Press

    PHOENIX - The Arizona Supreme Court has thrown out the death sentence for a man convicted of sexually assaulting and killing a woman nearly 16 years ago at her apartment in Phoenix, ruling the trial judge made an error in refusing to let jurors hear that he was ineligible for parole.

    The court on Thursday upheld the convictions of Joel Randu Escalante-Orozco in the 2001 death of Maria Garza-Rivera, but sent his case back to a lower court for a new sentencing trial on his first-degree murder conviction.

    The decision leading to the new sentencing trial centered on whether jurors should have been told about Escalante-Orozco's chances of release from prison if they opted against a death sentence and instead imposed a life sentence.

    The trial judge told jurors that if they decided on a life sentence, then the judge would decide whether Escalante-Orozco would have a chance at release after serving 25 years. Escalante-Orozco's attorney argued jurors shouldn't consider his potential for release when deciding whether to impose the death penalty.

    The state's highest court cited a decision made seven months ago in another death-penalty case from Arizona.

    In that case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that people convicted in death-penalty cases have a right to tell jurors that parole is unavailable to them in situations where prosecutors make an issue of their "future dangerousness" and acknowledge that the only alternative to a death sentence is life in prison without parole.

    In Escalante-Orozco's case, prosecutors argued they didn't put his future dangerousness at issue, though a prosecutor told jurors that Escalante-Orozco had given up his right to live through all the evil that he committed.

    Garza-Rivera's body was found a day after Escalante-Orozco, who worked as a maintenance worker at the apartment complex, had installed flooring at her apartment. She was beaten and stabbed until she bled to death.

    Escalante-Orozco told police that he had consumed two beers the night of the killing and that "everything went blank" until he found himself lying atop the victim's blood-soaked body. The victim's then-3-year-old son, who wasn't harmed, wandered around the apartment in the aftermath.

    The ruling said Escalante-Orozco returned to his apartment to shower, threw away his blood-covered clothes in a trash bin at the complex and took a bus to Mexico. He was taken into custody six years later in Idaho.

    Escalante-Orozco, who denied assaulting and killing Garza-Rivera, suggested that he had been drugged by relatives who were angry at him.

    His trial defense focused on a theory that another man sexually attacked and killed Garza-Rivera in a jealous rage because she was interested in Escalante-Orozco's companionship.

    http://www.azfamily.com/story/342766...n-2001-killing

  4. #4
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Arizona death row inmate will not be executed after all

    Arizona Republic

    An Arizona man who was formerly on death row will not be executed after all, partly because of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on a completely different case.

    But he won't be released from prison either. Joel Escalante-Orozco on Friday accepted a new plea agreement for a life sentence.

    The Arizona Supreme Court had thrown out his death sentence in 2017 after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in an Arizona case that prosecutors could not make the threat of "future dangerousness" an issue during trial.

    On March 10, 2001, Maria Garza-Rivera was found dead in her apartment. She had been stabbed repeatedly, beaten and sexually assaulted.

    According to his supervisor, Escalante-Orozco, a maintenance worker, was seen having a conversation with Garza-Rivera a day before. After she was killed, Escalante-Orozco fled to Mexico. He was arrested in Idaho in 2007, convicted and sentenced to death in 2013.

    During Escalante-Orozco's trial, his lawyers objected to jurors being able to consider his potential for release when deciding on the death penalty. Their objection was denied.

    The Arizona Supreme Court vacated Escalante-Orozco's death sentence due to the U.S. Supreme Court opinion in Lynch v. Arizona, which said the possibilities of a future law allowing for parole doesn't diminish a defendant's right to inform a jury of his parole ineligibility, according to court records.

    The state Supreme Court also stated that prosecutors did try to use concern about future dangerousness to win the death penalty. Prosecutors introduced evidence of actions Escalante-Orozco took against his ex-wife while also talking about the crime against Garza-Rivera.

    "Escalante-Orozco is in his 40s, and the jury could have believed he would live to see release. The jury deliberated for about thirteen hours, which suggests it gave careful consideration to the sentencing options," the court ruled in 2017. "We cannot know what role the possibility of release played in the jurors’ minds as they decided the propriety of the death penalty."

    https://www.azcentral.com/story/news...ra/3831886002/
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

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