A federal jury remained deadlocked after deliberating more than 10 hours on whether to impose the death penalty against Oscar Antonio Grande and Ismael Juarez Cisneros.
Because the jury couldn't reach unanimous agreement to impose the death penalty, Grande, 22 of Fairfax, and Cisneros, 26 of Vienna, received sentences Tuesday, June 14, of life in prison without the possibility of release.
The same jury last month convicted Grande and Cisneros of the 2003 murder of Brenda Paz, ruling unanimously that they were eligible for the death penalty since the murder was committed in an "especially heinous, cruel, or depraved manner." Paz, a federal witness, was 17-years-old and pregnant at the time of her murder.
IN DECIDING whether to sentence the defendants to death, the jury considered “aggravating” factors and “mitigating” factors presented by prosecutors and defense attorneys during the penalty phase.
Aggravating factors that would justify the death penalty included the fact that the murder involved torture, that Paz was pregnant and the defendant's past criminal history, including the non-fatal stabbing of a 15-year-old victim at the Fairfax Town Centre shopping center in April 1999.
Mitigating factors that instead led jurors to sentence the two men to life in prison included, for example, that Cisneros “was subjected to abuse, abandonment and neglect as a child, including violence and brutality.”
The defense presented 37 possible mitigating factors for Cisneros and 21 for Grande, a former student at Fairfax High School.
MS-13 gang members wanted Paz dead for cooperating with police and prosecutors in cases against MS-13 members in Northern Virginia and Texas. The "green light" to kill her was supported by gang members from Texas, Los Angeles, even El Salvador, but the decision to kill her was made by Grande's and Cisneros' clique of MS-13 in the Fair Oaks Holiday Inn on Route 50 on July 12, 2003.
Prosecutors Ronald L. Walutes and Patricia T. Giles argued that Grande and Cisneros should be sentenced to death, during closing arguments last Thursday, June 9.
"Oscar Grande is a man who cradled Brenda Paz in his arms [in the hotel room] … knowing he would be carving her up the next morning," Giles said, during closing arguments.
Paz thought she was going on a fishing trip with Grande and Cisneros the next morning. Instead, she was stabbed more than a dozen times through her throat, abdomen and heart. She died on a muddy river bank of the Shenandoah River on July 13, 2003.
"Two men walked Brenda Paz to where she would die. Two men plunged knives into her body. … Two men cut her throat. Two men left her to rot," said Walutes. "This is a shockingly evil, wicked crime."
"A crime deserving of the ultimate punishment," said Giles.
BUT DEFENSE ATTORNEYS argued that life in prison with no possibility of release is punishment enough.
"Is he going to suffer enough to compensate for his crime? I believe so," said David Baugh, Grande's defense attorney, during closing arguments.
"We need to make one thing perfectly clear," said James Clark, Cisneros' defense attorney told the jury. "Nobody is asking you to tolerate what he did.”