A 23-year-old man who prosecutors say confessed to killing an unarmed father of two was found not guilty of murder Thursday by a Fresno jury.
Sue Yang stood accused of shooting Arthur Solorio Jr., 38, as he was returning home with milk for his family two years ago.
Yang had even described the .22 caliber gun he used and helped police draw a map of the crime scene, prosecutors said.
But a Fresno County Superior Court jury found Yang not guilty. One juror said prosecutors failed to prove their case.
Yang's case is the third murder trial in the last three months in which Fresno County prosecutors have failed to win a conviction. For District Attorney Elizabeth Egan, the outcome posed a serious question: have her homicide prosecutors lost their touch?
Earlier this month, another jury found Jorge Alcantar, 32, a suspected gang member, not guilty of first-degree murder in the fatal shooting of an unarmed man and the attempted murder of the man's friend at a central Fresno liquor store on March 19.
Jurors deadlocked on whether Alcantar committed second-degree murder. Prosecutors said they will retry Alcantar on that charge.
Prosecutors also are retrying Alvin Dalton, 55, who is accused of fatally shooting his unarmed female neighbor at a central Fresno apartment complex on March 2. In Dalton's first trial in June, jurors deadlocked on murder charges.
Egan declined to comment on the three cases because they are still pending. Her spokeswoman, Sonia De La Rosa, said that in the past two years, prosecutors have had 30 guilty homicide verdicts and no acquittals.
(In September 2010, however, a jury acquitted Thomas Farias, 24, of first-degree murder in the shooting death of Christopher Lee McMillan, 31, at a motel near Roeding Park in August 2009. Farias was convicted of assault with a firearm involving a separate victim and was sentenced to three years in prison.)
De La Rosa added that despite the loss of a third of the agency's staff over the last several years, "we have not reduced our homicide team's staff as that is and remains a priority."
Read more:
http://www.fresnobee.com/2011/08/18/2503741/gang-member-who-confessed-to-fresno.html#disqus_thread#ixzz1VVoe36sZ
Topic: Man who confessed to slaying cleared by jury (Read 388 times)