Encino Shooting: State High Court Affirms Double Murderer's Death Penalty

The California Supreme Court today vacated a finding in a double murder case that the killings were “especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel,” while affirming the killer’s death penalty.

Attorneys for Robert Carrasco -- who was sentenced to death in 1999 for the Dec. 26, 1994, shooting death of co-worker George Camacho at Ross Swiss Dairy in Los Angeles and the Oct. 24, 1995, shooting death of Allan Friedman in Encino -- alleged that there were numerous errors made at trial.

Carrasco did not get a fair trial, they said, because the judge denied a request for a second attorney, counsel was ineffective and evidence of the defendant escaping from jail pending trial should have been barred, among other reasons.

The only error conceded by the high court was an instruction given to the jury about the special circumstance allegation of a heinous crime. The standard for the allegation is “a conscienceless or pitiless crime that is unnecessarily torturous to the victim,” the jury was told.

The Supreme Court previously ruled that instruction to be “unconstitutionally vague,” Justice Goodwin Liu wrote in his opinion.

“Nevertheless,” Liu wrote, “defendant was not otherwise prejudiced because the jury would have heard the same evidence ... giving the erroneous instruction did not change the underlying facts available for the jury to consider when it returned a death verdict at the penalty phase.”

The court concluded that a second special-circumstance allegation of multiple murders was sufficient to support a death sentence.

Carrasco killed his first victim, Camacho, a 29-year-old father of two, because Camacho had been allowed to get his night shift back after it had been given to Carrasco.

A co-worker testified that Carrasco said he would lose about $9,000 a month from his second job painting cars if he gave up the shift. Carrasco denied making that statement.

Several witnesses testified that Carrasco admitted to or boasted of the killing and threatened to hurt anyone who talked about it.

Allan Friedman, 28, the second victim, was shot at least seven times during a drug deal gone bad.

Carrasco told his supervisor at the dairy that he had planned to meet Friedman to exchange $25,000 to $35,000 for a kilo of cocaine and then shoot Friedman and keep the drugs and the money.

After the initial deal, Carrasco demanded the cocaine back and, when Friedman tried to drive off, Carrasco shot him, grabbing a bag that turned out to have only a book inside.

According to a man who drove Carrasco to the exchange, the defendant told him that it wasn’t the first time he had killed someone. Carrasco described it as “just like popping a balloon” and told the driver that it was “nothing to him.”

Carrasco was arrested in February 1996 and denied committing the murders.

On May 31, 1997, he escaped from the North County Correctional Facility. Carrasco, who had been a trusty, or inmate worker, was arrested the next night in West Los Angeles, about 40 miles away.

On the witness stand, Carrasco told jurors that he was given his first gun, a .357-caliber Magnum revolver, by some older teenagers when he was 10 years old, the same year his father died.

He always had a gun with him after the Los Angeles riots, he said, because his drive took him past buildings that had been burned. But he said had “never pointed a gun at anybody,” and he and Camacho were good friends.

He identified another man, a gang member, as Camacho’s killer.

Defense attorneys said that Carrasco’s trial lawyer was ineffective, because he failed to raise issues of past drug use, an alcoholic, abusive stepfather and head injuries, among other things, during the penalty phase of trial.

The high court rejected those arguments.

--City News Service

PHOTO Patch file photo.