Some jurors thought Oscar Grande and Ismael Cisneros should be sentenced to death for the torture they inflicted on 17-year-old Brenda Paz.
Grande cradled Paz in his arms in the Fair Oaks Holiday Inn on Route 50, knowing he would murder her the next morning.
Paz, a former ward of Arlington County courts left the federal witness protection program in Minneapolis, to rejoin gang members in Northern Virginia. She woke up July 13, 2003, thinking she, Grande, Cisneros and other gang members would spend the day fishing. Instead, the federal witness who was prepared to testify against MS-13 gang members in Northern Virginia and Texas, was stabbed more than a dozen times through her abdomen, throat and heart by Grande, 22, of Fairfax, and Cisneros, 26, of Vienna.
On the muddy river banks of the Shenandoah River, Paz asked her "friends" why. She was told because she was a "rat," — a "snitch" — for cooperating with police and prosecutors.
Paz's body was discovered four days later, and only her tattoos enabled the FBI to figure out she was their witness. Her handprint remained etched in the mud, where she fell to the ground.
"Two men walked Brenda to where she would die. Two men plunged knives into her body … Two men cut her throat. Two men left her to rot," said Ronald L. Walutes, assistant U.S. attorney, during closing arguments of the two-month trial on June 9. "This is a shockingly evil, wicked crime."
"A crime deserving of the ultimate punishment," said Patricia T. Giles, assistant U.S. attorney.
But after deliberating more than 10 hours, the jury could not reach unanimous agreement to impose the death penalty, and Grande and Cisneros will receive sentences of life in prison without the possibility of release.
The jury gave its verdict on Tuesday, June 14, in the U.S. District Courthouse in Alexandria, where Grande and Cisneros are scheduled to be formally sentenced on Sept. 9, 2005.
<b>THE SAME JURY</b> convicted Grande and Cisneros in May of five counts associated with Paz's murder, ruling unanimously that the two co-defendants were eligible for the death penalty since the government proved that the murder was committed in an "especially heinous, cruel or depraved manner."
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 of the trial.
Aggravating factors that would have justified the death penalty included the fact that the premeditated murder involved torture, that Paz was pregnant and that the murder was committed to prevent her from assisting a federal investigation.
Another aggravating factor that all 12 jurors agreed upon was that Grande and Cisneros had engaged in a pattern of criminal activity. In April 1999, in one of the most egregious examples, Grande solicited Cisneros to stab a 15-year-old at Fairfax Towne Center shopping center, in retaliation for the victim stopping Grande from further assaulting another student during a fight at Fairfax High School. The victim survived.
Cisneros was deported to Mexico, but returned to Northern Virginia within a few weeks.
"They are ruthless, they are cold-blooded, and they are killers," Giles told the jury. "They are, truly, partners in crime."
The fact that Grande and Cisneros killed Paz to obstruct justice, and that she was pregnant at the time, outweigh any mitigating factors the defense offered, Giles said.
<b>IN THE END,</b> not all the jurors agreed.
Defense attorneys presented 37 possible mitigating factors for Cisneros and 21 for Grande.
Mitigating factors that 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.”
Cisneros’ life was like a war zone, said his attorney, but in Cisneros' life there was no way for him to determine who fought on his side. His father was a source of terrible abuse, not the comfort and support he should have been. The gang, MS-13, filled in as family later in his life.
Cisneros' mother came from Mexico City, where she lives in a house he bought for her, to testify on behalf of her son. She described her first visit to Arlington County Detention Center, where Cisneros has been jailed for the past 17 months. "When I went in, I was so distraught, and when I left I was so peaceful because I was able to see him," she said. "He said to me, 'Forgive me for not being the son you wanted.'"
All 12 jurors found that Cisneros' children, mother and siblings would be adversely affected if he were executed.
"The death penalty cuts through so many, so many people who didn't do anything to anybody," said James Clark, Cisneros' attorney.
Although only one juror found that Grande's execution would deny him the opportunity to seek redemption for his role in the death of Brenda Paz, six of the 12 jurors found that the execution of Grande would cause emotional trauma to his niece.
The trial offered few glimpses of Grande, other than his involvement in the gang and in the murder. But during testimony from his sister, both he and she cried as attorneys showed pictures he once drew for his niece and pictures she drew for him.
<b>LIFE IN PRISON</b>with no possibility of release is punishment enough, argued defense attorneys.
"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 Clark, Cisneros' defense attorney. "Nobody is asking you to tolerate what he did.”