Toste murder case stands alone

<p>A Sonoma County judge on Friday separated the 2006 slaying of Matthew Toste in a downtown Santa Rosa parking garage from 10 other unrelated grand jury indictments, saying that a single trial for five defendants on five different cases could confuse the jury.</p><p>Toste, 32, was shot twice in the chest in the Seventh Street parking garage as he defended a female cousin from the defendants’ harassment, witnesses told investigators.</p><p>Eighteen months after the shooting, Joseph Lopez Jr., 20, his father Joseph Lopez Sr., 40, a cousin Raul Lopez -Granados, 21, Paul Whiterock, 29, and Nicholas Mejia, 31, were indicted by a grand jury after the panel heard weeks of evidence presented by prosecutors in secret proceedings.</p><p>All five men are charged with Toste’s murder, being gang members, conspiracy and sentencing enhancements that could lead to life terms in prison. </p><p>The 15-count indictment also alleges the men committed other, unrelated crimes in four separate incidents over several months’ time. The different crimes include varying combinations of the defendants.</p><p>Those allegations include an attempted murder in Santa Rosa in November 2006 against Lopez Jr., Mejia and Lopez-Granados; weapons charges in connection with a shooting incident in September 2006 against Lopez Jr.; assault with a deadly weapon charges against Lopez Jr. and Lopez-Granados July 2006 incident at Finley Park; and drug-dealing charges against Mejia from October 2007.</p><p>Judge Lawrence Antolini ruled that some of prosecutors’ evidence in some crimes wouldn’t be admissible against the defendants in other crimes. </p><p>Prosecutors allege the men are gang members and that the alleged gang activity links all of the different crimes together. They objected to severing the case into separate trials.</p><p>Antolini said trying all of the cases together carries the risk of “guilt by association” for all five defendants. He said it also could unfairly lump weak cases with stronger ones and inflame jurors.</p><p>Lopez Sr. and Whiterock are charged in the Toste slaying, but not in any of the other crimes alleged.</p><p>“The court believes that a trial on all five incidents poses a substantial risk of jury confusion,” Antolini said in his ruling. “The sheer number of incidents, the number of different versions of those incidents and the different combinations of defendants who allegedly participated in those incidents will make it difficult for the jury to compartmentalize the evidence.”</p><p>Further hearings related to the non-Toste charges will be held later this month.</p><p>Trial in the murder case was scheduled to begin in August.</p>