Defense Gets Its Turn In Palm Springs Retiree Murder Trial

The lawyer for a San Francisco bartender accused with four others in the 2008 stabbing death of a Palm Springs retiree invoked author Ernest Hemingway today in claiming that his client is the victim of guilt by association.

Deputy Public Defender Joe Forth, who represents Guatemala native Miguel Bustamante, said Hemingway was challenged once to write a six-word novel and came up with this: “For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn.”

Forth said he is no Hemingway, but he offered his own version based on his assessment of his client’s troubles:

“Miguel Bustamante: Bartender. College student. He got in with a bad crowd … He’s being charged, we believe, not because of the evidence, but because of guilt by association. You will see that Mr. Bustamante is a bartender and not a butcher,” Forth told jurors.

The public defender told Riverside County Superior Court Judge David Downing that he would be calling no witnesses, and then he rested his case.

San Francisco attorney David Replogle, 61, and Bustamante, 27, a Daly City man who worked in the Castro District’s Jet Bar, face first-degree murder and theft charges in the Dec. 5, 2008, slaying of 74-year-old Clifford Lambert. The men could face life in prison without parole if convicted of killing the former Los Angeles art dealer.

Replogle is expected to take the witness stand at some point during the trial, whose tentacles — through the various defendants — reach from Northern to Southern California, to Las Vegas, New York, Hollywood and the Mexican Riviera.

Also charged and awaiting trial are Daniel Garcia, 27, and Kaushal Niroula, a 28-year-old self-professed con man from San Francisco and Nepal native.

A fifth man, former Marine Craig McCarthy, entered into a voluntary manslaughter plea deal in September and has testified against Replogle and Bustamante, whose trial already has spanned two months. Bustamante and McCarthy were roommates and attended Heald College together in the Bay Area.

At the outset of the trial, Deputy District Attorney Lisa DiMaria told jurors that Replogle, Niroula and Garcia hatched a plan in November 2008 to kill Lambert, create forged power of attorney documents and steal his wealth.

She said Lambert was lonely after the 2007 drowning death of his estranged, 35-year-old partner, liked to meet people over the Internet and had an interest in younger men — making him vulnerable to the scam.

The prosecutor alleged that Niroula let Bustamante and McCarthy into Lambert’s home on Dec. 5, 2008, and Bustamante stabbed the retiree to death.

Following Lambert’s death, Replogle allegedly created false power of attorney documents that allowed the co-defendants to empty the victim’s bank accounts and try to complete a quick sale of his estimated $1.3 million Palm Springs home for $298,000. A judge, aware that Lambert was missing, later halted the sale.

Replogle’s attorney, John Patrick Dolan, has said that his client only created the documents because Niroula, who at one time claimed to be a rich prince, threatened Replogle.