Consider the men and the crimes they committed, said prosecuting attorneys. Consider the boys who became those men, said defense attorneys.
The penalty phase of the capital murder trial against MS-13 gang members Oscar Antonio Grande, 22 of Fairfax, and Ismael Juarez Cisneros, 26 of Vienna, began Monday, May 23 in U.S. District Court.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Patricia Giles asked the jury to sentence both Grande and Cisneros to death for killing federal witness Brenda Paz, a former ward of Arlington County courts who was murdered in July 2003. Considered a snitch by MS-13 gang members for cooperating with police and prosecutors, Paz was four-months pregnant when she was stabbed 16 times, nearly decapitated, and left on the banks of the Shenandoah River.
The federal jury convicted Grande and Cisneros of her murder on May 17.
"Consider the crime, consider the man," Giles said, to open the penalty phase of the trial.
"God doesn't make bad children," countered David Baugh, Grande's defense attorney, during his opening argument Monday.
Baugh showed Arlington County police photos of Grande showing half of Grande's body covered with tattoos. "Look at the tattoos, look at the attitude. How did he become like that?" Baugh said.
Baugh then showed photos of Grande smiling with childhood friends, some from middle school in Fairfax County. "How did this child become that man?" Baugh asked.
Grande's and Cisneros' attorneys are scheduled to present mitigating factors during the second phase of the trial, with the hope the jury will sentence them to life in prison rather than death.
"The death of Brenda Paz was a tragedy, but I submit to you … that the life of Ismael Cisneros was also a tragedy," said his defense attorney Nina Ginsberg.
Cisneros grew up in Mexico City, the son of a teenage mother who was married to an alcoholic who repeatedly beat Cisneros, his mother and siblings. Even after his mother took him away from his father's abuse and had him live with family, he was sexually assaulted by cousins in his new home.
"He was exposed his whole childhood to trauma, to fighting, to hatred," Ginsberg said.
A neurologist will testify, she said, about Cisneros' learning and developmental disabilities.
Prosecutors will show a different side of the two defendants, attempting to prove the two engaged in a pattern of violent criminal history as adults. Prosecutors said Grande solicited Cisneros to stab a 15-year-old boy in Fairfax Town Center in 1999.
Two co-defendants, Denis Rivera, 21 of Alexandria, and Oscar Garcia-Orellana, 32, were found not guilty of Paz's murder by the same jury on May 17.
The penalty phase of the trial is expected to last more than two weeks.
<1b>— Ken Moore