WHY DIDN'T THE DA GO FOR THE DEATH PENALTY?

If anyone deserved the death penalty it’s this multiple murderer. I guess the DA didn't seek the death penalty because the murders took place in the crime-ridden cesspool of Oakland where such killings are commonplace.

Bob Walsh says that if you are going to murder someone you should be very careful about what you write down, who you give it to and your method of transmission.

MAN TRIED FOR MURDERS AND ATTEMPTED MURDERS WROTE DETAILED LETTER DESCRIBING KILLINGS
By Paul T. Rosynsky

Oakland Tribune
November 4, 2011

OAKLAND -- A letter a prosecutor said was written by Gumaro Baez as the 22-year-old Oakland native sat in jail awaiting trial on multiple murder and attempted murder charges tells the jury everything it needs to know to convict Baez of a killing rampage that took the lives of three people, including two San Leandro teenage girls.

Written to a friend who also was in jail, the letter gives vivid details of a Feb. 3, 2008, shooting in a van that resulted in the death of cousins Dominique Hoover-Brown, 15, and Melissa Jackson, 17, and the near-killings of two other men who also were in the van. Baez also is accused of killing a man less than two days before the van shooting and the attempted murder of the van driver and front seat passenger.

"As soon as I thought (the van driver) was dead, everyone had to go," the letter states. "Everyone knows you can't leave witnesses."

The letter explains how Baez got into the van with his friend, Devashawn Walker, to confront the driver, who Baez believed was responsible for the death of his brother, Adiel Meza, a year earlier. Meza was gunned down by an Oakland police officer after he repeatedly reached for a gun he had just been shooting into the air.

Deputy district attorney Stacie Pettigrew said Baez thought the driver of the van should have allowed Meza into his home the night he was killed before police arrived. Pettigrew asked that the names of the driver and his passenger not be published for fear of retaliation.

On Super Bowl Sunday in 2008, Baez developed a ruse to share a bottle of liquor with the driver, his friend and the two girls they were hanging out with to get into the van, Pettigrew said. Once inside, and after the group smoked marijuana and drank alcohol, Baez asked the driver what happened to his brother and then began to fire his handgun, critically wounding the driver and his friend and killing the two girls who sat in the back, Pettigrew said.

The letter explains how Baez developed the ruse to get into the van, how he decided to kill the driver and how immediately after that he decided that he had to kill everyone else in the van, Pettigrew said.

"(The letter) gives details that only the killer would have known," Pettigrew said. "Not only details about what was going on in that van but details about what was going on in (Baez's) mind."

While the letter describes the details of the killings and gives a motive for why they occurred, the two surviving men in the van told police that Baez was the shooter.

But Al Wax, Baez's defense attorney, urged the jury not to jump to conclusions about his client's guilt as he attempted to shift blame to Walker, who took a plea deal to avoid murder convictions.

Walker's plea deal came after an Alameda County judge ruled that prosecutors did not have enough evidence against Walker to charge him with the murders. Instead, Walker pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter for driving the van after the original driver jumped out after he was shot.

Wax told the jury that his client was innocent and said it was Walker who killed the girls. He also told the jury that Walker killed another man 46 hours earlier.

Wax used testimony during the trial to try to prove his point.

The two surviving witnesses recanted their original statements to police. One witness told the jury that he suffered from amnesia, and the other said he could not remember what happened. Meanwhile, the inmate who initially brought the letter to police recanted his original story on the witness stand and instead said he wrote the letter.

But Pettigrew said the jury should have no doubt who wrote the letter as she pointed out the similarities between the handwriting in the letter and the handwriting in hundreds of other letters Baez wrote from jail.

Pettigrew also pointed out that the letter contained numerous details of the crime and personal information about Baez that the inmate would not have known.

Baez faces life in prison without the possibility of parole. The jury will begin deliberating Monday.