Defense Lawyer Admits That Defendant Pulled the Trigger

The defense lawyer for a man who fatally shot an unarmed acquaintance in Oakland's Fruitvale district in 2013 told jurors today that he will ask them to find the man not guilty, saying his client acted in self-defense.

Attorney Ernie Castillo admitted that Jose Lepe, 32, shot 20-year-old Michael "Mikey" Stenger, 20, in the 3100 block Coolidge Avenue at about 11 p.m. on Dec. 1, 2013, but said Lepe thought Stenger "was there to kill him" because he believed that Stenger was the person who had shot him the previous year and had come to finish him off.

In his opening statement in Lepe's trial, Castillo said Lepe fired two shots out of "a sense of panic and fear and desperation" because he thought Stenger was going for a gun when he reached toward his waistband.

Castillo said, "This is not a case of who did it but a case about why he (Lepe) did it."

Lepe will take the witness stand to "explain everything that happened," Castillo said.

Prosecutor Patrick Moriarty told jurors that at the end of Lepe's trial, which is expected to be short, he will ask them to find Lepe guilty of murder, saying, "You're here to decide one thing: what was going through this man's mind when he shot and killed an unarmed man in the head?" Moriarty said, "At the end, you will know what was going through the defendant's head" but he didn't provide specifics.

The fatal shooting of Stenger was captured on surveillance camera footage that was shown to jurors today.

Stenger's family members sobbed when a photo of his dead body was also shown.

Moriarty said, "The facts are not disputed because they can't be."

Moriarty said Stenger and Lepe "didn't like each other" and Lepe believed that Stenger was the man who fired 13 shots at him at 35th Avenue and Davis Street in Oakland the night of Feb. 22, 2012, and inflicted several gunshot wounds.

Lepe told Oakland police while he was in the hospital that he thought Stenger was the man who shot him but the case wasn't solved and remained open until the night that Lepe killed Stenger, Moriarty said.

The prosecutor said Stenger was in fear of Lepe in the days leading up to his killing and in what he described as "an eerily-accurate prediction" he had shown his mother a photo of Lepe and told her, "If anything happens to me, Lepe is the one who did it." In what Moriarty said "was not a very good setup," Stenger, who was unemployed and homeless, wound up living in the same apartment with Lepe's ex-girlfriend and her 1-year-old daughter, who was Lepe's child, because he was a family friend and needed a place to stay.

He said that in a quirk of fate, a friend of Stenger's dropped him off outside the apartment complex at the same time that Lepe, who lived elsewhere and had borrowed a friend's car, pulled up to the complex to pick up his ex-girlfriend and their daughter because his ex-girlfriend wanted him to buy diapers for their daughter.

Moriarty said Lepe "executed" Stenger by shooting at him and later told his friend, "I had to get on him (Stenger)" and asked him to get rid of his car. Castillo said Lepe had "lived in constant fear for his life" after he was shot the previous year and when he saw Stenger "it quickly turned into a situation that in his mind was a life or death situation."

Castillo said Lepe "wasn't looking for trouble" but was simply "protecting himself and his daughter from harm."

--Bay City News