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Court of Appeal:
Prosecutor Justified in Terming Defendants ‘Monsters’
Opinion Says Facts in Rape/Sodomy Case Warranted Negative Characterizations; No Violation of Racial Justice Act
By a MetNews Staff Writer
Div. Five of the First District Court of Appeal has held that a prosecutor’s reference during argument to the jury to two Latino defendants who do not speak English as “monsters” and “predators” did violate the California Racial Justice Act of 2020 and did not otherwise amount to prosecutorial misconduct in light of the egregiousness of the defendants’ conduct in raping and sodomizing a woman they had abducted.
The opinion affirms the convictions of Fredi Analberto Lopez-Flores and Christian Alejandro May Quintero on six counts of sex offenses, including forcible rape in concert, with enhancements, one of which was kidnapping.
One of the comments to jurors was:
“This case belongs to Jane Doe. There is a human being that was inside of that car. There was a human being that was brutalized and it changed her life forever. She is the one that has to find a way to pick the pieces up and put one foot in front of the other. She’s the one at the age of 24 years old [who] lost her innocence, lost her youthfulness when she was kidnapped and raped by those two monsters that are sitting over there. She’s the one that has been forced to live in her own private hell.”
Victim Blames Herself
The prosecutor went on to say:
“It’s hard to watch Jane Doe’s testimony and not feel in some way she at least in part blames herself for what happened. It’s hard to think of a woman in the back of a stranger’s car begging for help and help is not coming. You, as members of this jury, who have an incredible opportunity to help Jane Doe understand this is not your fault. You were kidnapped, tortured, raped and abused by monsters. We’ve got your back.”
Presiding Justice Teri L. Jackson noted in a published portion of her opinion, filed Tuesday, that the defendants could be considered to have forfeited their contention by not objecting at trial to the argument, but said that because they also asserted that the failure to object means that there was ineffective representation by counsel, the merits would be addressed.
The defendants/appellants invoked Penal Code §745(H)(4), a part of the Racial Justice Act, which provides that “ ‘[r]acially discriminatory language’ means language that, to an objective observer, explicitly or implicitly appeals to racial bias, including, but not limited to, racially charged or racially coded language, language that compares the defendant to an animal….”
Act Not Violated
Jackson wrote:
“We agree that in certain contexts the term ‘monster’ may be suggestive of an animal or beast and that prosecutors should refrain from describing defendants as ‘monsters.’ However, here the prosecutor s use of the term twice during the People’s fairly lengthy closing argument was in the context of describing the defendants’ vicious crime during which they abducted Doe off the street, drove her to a secluded location, and then each defendant raped and sodomized her and forced her to orally copulate them—and was more akin to stating that the defendants’ actions were extremely cruel. The term itself is race-neutral, and its use here does not suggest either implicit or explicit bias against the defendants.
“The terms ‘predator’ and ‘prey’ were used more extensively by the prosecutors during closing argument. These too are race-neutral terms.”
The defendants pointed to a dictionary definition of “predator” as “an animal that lives by predation.” Jackson responded:
“However, the terms ‘predator’ and ‘prey’ are commonly used in reference to human behavior as well…Characterizing defendants’ conduct as predatory was justified based on the evidence, and we do not find that an objective observer would conclude that the prosecutors’ comments appealed to racial bias either explicitly or implicitly.”
Jackson that, as a general rule, a prosecutor, in arguing to a jury, should avoid name-calling, but said that, in light of the facts, the negative descriptions of the defendants was with the range of acceptable conduct, explaining:
“Evidence showed that the defendants committed multiple brutal crimes against Doe, whom they found in an inebriated state alone in the street in the middle of the night. Doe was taken into defendants’ car and driven 50 miles away. She was beaten and choked repeatedly during the drive, and was then raped and sodomized by each defendant and forced to orally copulate them. Describing the defendants as ‘prey[ing]” on Doe and referring to them as ‘predators’ and even ‘monsters’ were permissible based upon the evidence….
“Nor do we find that the prosecutors improperly appealed to the jury’s sympathy for Doe. When considered in context of the closing argument as a whole…, we find the prosecutors’ statements that Doe had difficulty telling her mother about the incident, had flashbacks while at work, and seemed to blame herself for what happened all fall within the prosecutors’ wide latitude to fairly comment on the evidence, including reasonable inferences and deductions from the evidence.”
Life Sentences
On May 11, 2022, Sonoma Superior Court Judge Christopher Honigsberg, at the sentencing phase of what he termed “one of the worst sexual assault cases I’ve ever seen,” imposed on Lopez-Flores a prison term of 330 years to life and ordered imprisonment of Quintero for 150 years to life.
Then-Sonoma District Attorney Jill Ravitch commented in a press release:
“Two violent predators have been brought to justice today. Given the defendants’ vicious behavior, the maximum sentences are entirely appropriate in this case.”
The case is People v. Quintero A165276, 2025 S.O.S. 14.
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