California v. Perez
Annotate this Case“Max” owed money to a group of other drug dealers for some methamphetamine that had gone missing. He delegated the ambush, binding, robbing of the drugs and money his creditors might have, and their murder. Nine men, including defendant Pablo Sandoval, worked for him; others, including defendant Edgar Ivan Chavez Navarro, worked for a fellow drug dealer named Eduardo Alvarado; and still others, including defendant Jose Luis Perez, worked for (or with) another drug dealer named Flor Iniguez. According to the prosecution’s designated gang expert, most, if not all, of the participants — including all three of the defendants named in this case — were members or associates of the Sinaloa drug cartel; the victims were members or associates of a different cell of the same cartel. The participants carried out the plan, but not flawlessly. One victim survived being shot in the face and chest and provided information that led police to defendant Perez and another. Perez gave statements to police incriminating himself. Defendants were convicted of multiple first-degree murders; they all appealed. In the published portion of its opinion, the Court of Appeal held that defense trial counsel forfeited any objection to expert testimony to case-specific hearsay by failing to raise it as an issue for review. In the unpublished portion of its opinion, the Court held there was insufficient evidence to support the gang special circumstance for which defendants were convicted. The Court also found the trial court erred in failing to instruct on the financial gain special circumstance. The Court, therefore, reversed on those two special circumstances, but otherwise found no prejudicial error.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.