California v. Ramirez
Annotate this CaseA jury convicted defendants Jerry Ramirez and Catherine Rodriguez Villarreal of attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon. The jury found them both not guilty of active participation in the Surenos, an alleged criminal street gang, and the jury rejected gang sentencing enhancement allegations that the attempted murder and the assault were committed for the benefit of the Surenos. Defendants appealed their convictions, arguing the trial court erroneously denied their motion to set aside the gang participation charges and the gang enhancement allegations under Penal Code section 9951 and, as a result, irrelevant but highly inflammatory gang evidence was admitted which deprived them of their due process rights to a fair trial on the attempted murder and assault charges. The Court of Appeal reviewed the case and concluded that the preliminary hearing evidence did not support the gang participation charges or the gang enhancement allegations, so the 995 motion should have been granted. The Court also determined the gang evidence erroneously admitted at trial violated defendants’ due process rights and resulted in a fundamentally unfair trial. Therefore, the judgment was reversed. Any other arguments defendants made was mooted by this reversal.
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