Jury selection underway for Indio double-murder retrial

Jury selection is set to continue Tuesday in the retrial of a 29-year-old gang member accused in the execution-style killings of two rival gang members in Indio a decade ago.

A mistrial was declared last month after jurors were unable to reach unanimous verdicts on the two first-degree murder charges against Elias Carmona Lopez.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for the defendant, who is accused in the shooting deaths of Erineo Perez and Martin Garcia on Oct. 10 and Oct. 26, 2004, respectively. Both victims were shot several times, including in the face.

The weeks-long jury selection process will be followed by opening statements, tentatively scheduled for March 7.

Jurors deadlocked, 11 to 1, in favor of conviction after hearing after about six weeks of testimony. Before the mistrial was declared, Lopez agreed to plead guilty to a single felony count of participating in a criminal street gang.

During his closing argument, Deputy District Attorney Scot L. Clark said Lopez was in possession of a pistol used in two killings, lived in between the two murder scenes and provided his former girlfriend with obscure details from the crimes that only the killer would know.

“The fact is that Mr. Lopez shot Mr. Perez — executed him,” the prosecutor alleged. “Mr. Lopez executed Mr. Garcia 16 days after the other killing.”

He urged jurors to heed the account of Lopez’s former girlfriend, who testified that the defendant confessed both killings to her a decade ago, in uncanny detail. “She had details from both of the killings that only the killer could know,” Clark said.

Lopez’s attorneys contended that detectives ignored numerous other suspects or avenues of investigation after an informant helped them find the murder weapon, a .22 caliber pistol, under Lopez’s mattress.

Police never took fingerprints nor DNA evidence from the firearm, failed to check for gunshot residue from the hands of other potential suspects and failed to aggressively pursue other leads, attorney Peter J. Morreale said.

Morreale said jurors should take the girlfriend’s testimony with a grain of salt, noting that she admitted being constantly high on methamphetamine at the time, and said she only purported to have knowledge of details from the second murder after being threatened with loss of her child.

Perez was found in the front seat of his vehicle near Indio City Hall and Garcia was found dead in an Indio alley. Lopez was an early suspect in both killings, but there was insufficient evidence to prosecute the case until July 2008, according to prosecutors.

After the killings, Lopez boarded a Greyhound bus and moved with Garcia to Arizona.

Lopez was brought back to Riverside County in 2008 from Arizona, where he had been imprisoned for armed robbery.