The murder of Jamiel Shaw was not over a Spiderman backpack or race

By Alex A. Alonso

Streetgangs.com Staff Writer

November 9, 2012 | 2:09 a.m.

Last Friday, Judge Ronald Rose upheld the jury’s sentence of death against Pedro “Darky” Espinoza who was convicted in the 2008 first degree murder of Jamiel Shaw. Many observers who had been watching this trial anticipated that this sentence was inevitable because of political and social pressure that developed immediately after the March 2, 2008 murder.

Espinoza was born in Mexico, and came to the United States at 3-years and never gained legal status. Many anti-immigrant activists drew much attention to this case because Espinoza, many believe, should have been deported to Mexico years previously.

He had an extensive juvenile record along with one adult conviction which stemmed from an incident he had with Samuel Durant when he confronted him at a park while armed. Espinoza spent several months in County jail for that offense from late 2007 to March 1, 2008, the day before he killed Shaw.

For an illegal immigrant, who had been released from the Los Angeles County jail the day before, to commit a murder was just stunning for most people including anti-immigrant activists.

The original Deputy District Attorney Michele Hanisee was taken off the case after Shaw Sr., expressed his dissatisfaction with the way she was handling the prosecution. Shaw Sr. went on local Los Angeles radio making several ridiculous accusations that she did not care about the illegal status of Espinoza and that she was going to prosecute this as a gang-related crime. Shaw Sr. characterized Hanisee as someone that wanted to expose or reveal facts about his son that he wanted to suppress.

Eventually this case left Judge Bowers’ court and into Judge Ronald Rose’s court with a new set of prosecutors, Bobby Grace and Allyson Ostrowsky. Eventually the father, Shaw Sr., received much of what was most important to him for the trial which was the suppression of evidence linking his son to a street gang.

The jury never knew that Shaw was an actual Blood gang member and that the motive of the shooting was not a Spiderman backpack or his race. The motive for this murder was actually driven only by a gang rivalry between Shaw’s and Espinoza’s neighborhood and Shaw was not mistakenly targeted.

Espinoza was transferred to San Quentin State Prison on Wednesday to spend the rest of his life with over 700 other condemned inmates that are awaiting execution. Espinoza will most likely never be executed because since 1978 when the death penalty was reinstated in California, the state has only executed 13 inmates. At the pace of executing 2.6 inmates per year it will take the State approximately 269 years to execute the 700 inmates in line before Espinoza.

Getting the facts straight

Most people trust the courts to get to the truth, especially if the complete truth could have an influence on the outcome of a trial, and I was especially surprised that Jamiel Shaw Jr.’s gang membership was suppressed by Judge Rose because it was the actual motive that led to his death. A Spiderman backpack or his race was not the motive at all. In previous court hearings Judge Rose ruled that several pieces of evidence that was clearly indicative of Shaw’s participation in a street gang would not come out.

The prosecution clearly understood that if the jury knew that this was a shooting by an 18th Street gang member against a rival Blood member, it would have never been able to pursue the death penalty because Los Angeles jurors would never recommend a death sentence in a typical street murder where there is one shooter and one victim.

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With suppressing all the gang evidence of Shaw, including photographs, MySpace page posts, his red belt, gang graffiti, information from his cell phone and several other items, it gave the prosecution the ammunition to create a new narrative as to why Espinoza shot and killed Shaw.

Shaw was not killed because he wore a Spiderman back pack. When Espinoza, Joel “Killer” Rodriguez and Ysenia Sanchez drove west on 21st Street, they noticed Jamiel Shaw walking west on the south side of 21st Street too. There was a conversation about Shaw’s clothing between Espinoza and fellow gang member Rodriguez, and they mentioned he was wearing red which included a belt, sneakers, shirt and the Spiderman backpack.

During the trial, the prosecution repeatedly mentioned to the jury that Shaw was killed because he was wearing a Spiderman backpack without mentioning the other red clothing he was wearing. During the preliminary hearing in 2008, Shaw’s clothing was characterized as “flamed up” or wearing a lot of red, and the back pack alone would not constitute “flamed out.”

The Spiderman back pack was repeated so often by the prosecution, that Judge Rose even mentioned the back pack as he sentenced Espinoza as if it had some relevance. The back pack was completely irrelevant as a motive to the shooting as the rest of his of Shaw’s clothing was not made public during the trial.

Judge Rose also suppressed the red belt that had gang graffiti written on it in Shaw’s own writing and the MySpace page posts where Shaw wrote, “Ek” which denotes 18th Street killer. LAPD Officer Winston Lee testified during the preliminary hearing that Shaw’s belt was consistent with gang affiliation but the prosecution fought to keep all of Shaw’s gang evidence out of the trial because they needed a sympathetic jury to get the death penalty against Espinoza.

Then they selected a jury that had seven blacks and presented a false argument that Shaw was an innocent victim shot because he was black.

As Espinoza and his group drove south on 5th Avenue to visit Torres which coincidentally was Shaw’s neighbor and friend also, Shaw continued to walk west on 21th Street, turning south on 5th Avenue. According to Torres, Espinoza came to his door in a white t-shirt looking for his son.

Torres told Espinoza that his son was not home and he headed back to the car where Sanchez was double parked waiting. A second witness, Tiffany Johnson originally told police that two individuals approached Shaw but she testified in court that only one person approached Shaw.

The driver Sanchez, also stated that Rodriguez never got out the car, but it was exposed that she had lied numerous times to the police.

Shaw began walking in the direction of Espinoza and within moments they were exchanging words just north of his house on the sidewalk. According to ear witness Chrystale Miles, 14, who was Shaw’s girlfriend on the phone with him at the time, there were gang references made in the conversation between Shaw and Espinoza. She even said that Shaw told her that he did not know “them,” suggesting more than one person.

Espinoza & Rodriguez knew that Shaw was a Blood, specifically a Rollin 20s member, based on their observations and other prior information. Espinoza’s cousin, Javier Espinoza, testified during the preliminary hearing that he knew who Shaw was from attending Los Angeles High School and that everyone knew he was a “Twinkie”, a derogatory term for 20s Bloods.

Espinoza and Rodriguez had prior information about Shaw’s gang identity because they were driving in the gang turf of Black P Stone Bloods and never mistakenly identified Shaw as such.

If this homicide was the result of a mistaken identity of a person who really was not a Blood, Shaw would have been falsely identified as a Black P Stones Blood and Shaw was never identified as such.





Black P Stone gang graffiti on 4th Avenue near 21st Street showing “18K” for 18th Street killer, November 6, 2012.

Shaw was not killed because he was black. During opening statements of the trial and seven times during closing arguments, the prosecution mentioned that Shaw was killed by Espinoza because he was black. The prosecution had an unprecedented seven black jurors to present this effective but inaccurate argument too, and they most likely believed that race played a role since they were never presented with any evidence of Shaw’s gang identity.

Deputy District Attorney Allyson Ostrowsky told the judge on Friday, “There was overwhelming evidence that Pedro Espinoza killed Jamiel Shaw because of the color of his skin and the [red] color of a backpack.” The statement suggests that there were actually two mutually exclusive motives, because one is killed because of his race and then also killed because he was mistaken as a gang member. It’s one or the other and most homicides in Los Angeles have nothing to do with race.

The prosecution presented absolutely no trial evidence that Espinoza was motivated by race nor was he charged with a hate crime. The prosecution team strongly suggested this racial theory knowing that a majority black juror would be aware of the perceived black-brown conflict that has been the topic of many incidents in Los Angeles for over a decade.

Shaw Sr. tried to manipulate the media by stating that the “BK” tattoo on Espinoza’s neck behind his left ear lobe meant “Black Killer” when the true meaning is “Blood Killer.”

The rivalry between the 18th Street neighborhood located in the Adams-Hauser area of south Los Angeles and various Blood neighborhoods goes back to the mid-1990s and is not based on race. There are several Black gangs in Los Angeles, such as the Hoovers, Trouble, Rollin 30s, Rollin 50s NHC, and Rollin’ 40s that share turf with 18th Street without any such racial conflict.

Shaw was a member of a rival street gang. Prior to Judge Rose sentencing Espinoza to death, he went over the circumstances of the crime and made some very interesting statements. Judge Rose stated that when Espinoza asked Shaw, “where are you from,” Shaw never responded. The only witness in the trial who would know the answer to that question would be Chrystale Myles, the girl friend on the phone at the time Shaw was shot.





Jamiel Shaw, 2008

She testified that Shaw did not say anything to Espinoza, but when she was first questioned about their conversation, she provided the LAPD a different story about her boyfriend and his gang affiliation. That information was documented in the original police report but the police report was not introduced as evidence during the trial and during closing arguments, Deputy District Attorney Ostrowsky forewarned the jury not to request a copy of the police report.

Judge Rose continued to state that there was, “no evidence produced at the trial that the victim [Shaw] was a gang member.” The Judge is right and wrong, because during several pre-trial hearings, he suppressed the evidence that pointed to Shaw’s gang membership so that during the trial, defense attorney Csaba Palfi would not be able to present that evidence. It seemed disingenuous for the judge to state that there was no evidence introduced in the trial pointing to Shaw’s gang membership when it was he that suppressed the gang evidence.

Espinoza did not act alone. There were three eye witnesses that testified about the shooting of Shaw but only one witness, Tiffany Johnson, actually saw the shooting. She testified last April that the shooter was wearing a black hoodie which contradicted the testimony of Jose Torres who said that Espinoza came to the door looking for his son wearing a white short sleeve t-shirt.

This apparent contradiction could possibly be explained by the second 18th Street gang member, Joel “Killer” Rodriguez, who was in the car with Espinoza during the drive.

Both Johnson and Torres told the police early in the investigation that they saw two males, but during the trial earlier this year, they both distanced themselves from those prior statements. Ysenia Sanchez, who did not sound credible testified that Rodriguez never got out the car, but there are some unanswered questions as to Rodriguez’ participation and him possibly being the trigger person.

When a gang member commits a crime, usually the second gang member present is also charged in the crime. In this case, one would expect that Rodriguez would have been sitting at the defense table with Espinoza. He was never charged and never showed up in court as a witness.

It is quite possible that the LAPD believed that Espinoza acted alone, but since we know that he was in the company of another 18th Street gang member, and they both discussed Shaw’s gang membership in the car, and the eye-witness to the shooting, Johnson, saw the shooter wearing a black hoodie and not a white t-shirt, one would think that Rodriguez would at least been arrested and possibly charged to answer questions about Shaw’s death.

During the hearing last Friday, deputy district attorney Ostrowsky told the judge that “the inconsistency of what the shooter was wearing is irrelevant” because a jury heard all the evidence and already decided.

The Importance of Lessons not Learned

Some might say that the actual truth and the details that led up to the homicide are not important because no matter how it is analyzed, a person was murdered. I believe that the circumstances that led up to this murder are important to understanding the true motive of street violence and to educate the general public of what really happened.

We do not want to put fear in people without good reason, and when they hear that an innocent person was murdered because they wore a Spiderman back pack, most residents would find that appalling. If they hear more facts and learn other circumstances, then the fear card becomes ineffective and residents can confidently say that someone like Pedro Espinoza would never murder me or my child.

It is irresponsible to tell Angelenos that a person was murdered because of race or a back pack because of political pressure to portray the victim in a way that would cause a jury to select the death penalty against the defendant. That sentence is certainly important to a grieving family, but was it really necessary for the Los Angeles district attorney to pursue this case as a death penalty case because a family is grieving and political pressure about the shooter’s citizenship? In most instances the shooting on March 2, 2008 would have never been prosecuted as a capital case.

Since 2008 over 1,500 people have become victim to homicide in the City of Los Angeles and Espinoza is the only person charged in a murder who was an illegal citizen that was facing the death penalty for committing a gang-related murder that targeted one victim as a teenager. Earlier this year gang member, Ryan Moore, 35, was sentenced to death for participating in a triple homicide in 2006 and in March of this year gang member Gabriel Ronquillo, 26, was sentenced to death for two murders he committed in 1999. The death penalty, in Los Angeles, has been reserved for the most violent criminals in most instances and not influenced by any political pressure.

Another important reason for getting at the truth is because it can teach us a valuable lesson about the risks of gang membership and the dangerous exposure that identity creates. This is an opportunity for the public to understand what draws young teens to gangs and the father could have become a leading advocate on this issue helping other parents and possibly saving lives. This issue has taken the lives of so many young males and rather focuses on the primary reason why Shaw was murdered, he directed his attention on illegal immigration and the citizenship of the assailant.

This death sentence will most likely be reversed because there were far too many inconsistencies in the prosecution’s case and an appellate court looking at all the evidence will say that too much information was concealed from the jury.

Additionally it usually takes more aggravating circumstances to receive a death sentence. William Vasquez, another 18th Street gang member who was charged with five separate homicides that occurred over a two year period, was was able to escape the death penalty and received a life sentence in 2010. On the other hand Ryan Moore, who was convicted of a triple homicide was sentenced to death in 2012 while his accomplice, Charles Smith received a hung jury when it came to his death penalty.

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Alex Alonso is an author, film maker and founder of Streetgangs.com. He is the contributing author in the 2010 book entitled “Black Los Angeles: American Dreams and Racial Realities” (New York University Press). He can be reached via email, Twitter or Instagram