‘It does present some very big problems for the court’: Richmond murder defendant’s dad barred from court for contact with juror

Juror dismissed, defendant's dad barred from court after improper conversation in gang case.

MARTINEZ — The father of an accused Sureño member was permanently kicked out of his son’s murder trial Thursday, after he admitted to talking to a juror about court proceedings, an act the judge called “absolutely prohibited” and concerning.

The juror, who was excused Thursday, told Judge Theresa Canepa that defendant Jonathan Barrera’s father tried to discredit a key prosecution witness. The juror’s description contrasted starkly with the account of Barrera’s father as to what happened.

The juror’s dismissal is just the latest problem to befall this trial; on Wednesday, two jurors were dismissed because of scheduling conflicts. The three-defendant trial, now in its second month, is down to two alternate jurors, in addition to the 12 regular ones. The trial will now take a break until February, with weeks of testimony from both prosecution and defense witnesses still on the schedule.

Barrera is one of three Bay Area men accused of murdering a rising Richmond-area rapper, Rene Garcia, who used the stage name Lil’ G the Great. Prosecutors say Garcia’s murder was a gang hit, hatched by a Sureño subset in North Richmond called Varrio Frontera Locos, or VFL. Barrera is charged with being one of three people who personally killed Garcia during a 2012 robbery.

During a lunch break Thursday afternoon, Barrera’s father approached Juror 5 outside of a Martinez restaurant and asked if he spoke Spanish, the juror told Canepa. The two then had a brief conversation about Luis Hernandez, a VFL dropout who testified in December that Barrera confessed to killing Garcia. Hernandez also described VFL’s history in detail.

“(Barrera’s father) asked if I spoke Spanish and what I thought about Luis Hernandez, why I think he (testified), what his deal was,” Juror 5 told Canepa, during a special hearing where all other jurors were not present. Barrera’s father also remarked that “It’s funny (Hernandez) didn’t say anything till they offered him money,” the juror said.

Juror 5 said he responded, “Yeah, maybe,” and that he engaged the father because he didn’t want to be “rude.”

Minutes earlier, Barrera’s father had given Canepa a more sanitized version of the conversation, that he asked Juror 5 “what he thought of this trial” and the juror responded by simply laughing.

“I didn’t know I couldn’t ask him that. … I’m so sorry,” Barrera’s father said.

After hearing from the juror and Barrera’s father, Canepa said the conversation was a “clear violation” of the standard admonition given to every jury in every criminal trial, that they not research the case nor discuss it with anyone, even their own family, until the trial’s resolution. She granted a motion by Contra Costa County Deputy District Attorney  Chad Mahalich to ban Barrera’s father from court, order him not to discuss the case with anyone but his son and Barrera’s attorneys, and excused Juror 5.

When all three defense teams objected to the excusal, Canepa told them, “You can object all you want” but she was not changing her mind.

“We’re going to have to let you go. … It does present some very big problems for the court,” Canepa told Juror 5. She added she understood that Barrera’s father approached him, not the other way around.

On Wednesday, Canepa will consider a prosecution motion to impose further sanctions on Barrera’s father. Coincidentally, Canepa already has threatened to sanction Barrera’s attorney, David Cohen, after he cross-examined Hernandez about things Canepa had ruled were off-limits.

In December, Hernandez testified for several hours, describing his former life as a VFL “shot caller,” or leader. He said that following Garcia’s killing, Barrera told him that he was responsible and named other cohorts. After dropping out of the gang in 2013, Hernandez was placed into a witness protection program.

At the start of the trial, Barrera’s defense team called Hernandez a liar and said they would discredit him.

Barrera, 30; Marcos Figueroa, 31; and Gabriel Schroeder, 23, all face charges of murdering Garcia to benefit VFL. Authorities do not say Figueroa was a member of the gang, but he is accused of setting up Garcia by luring him to the North Richmond park where he was robbed and fatally shot.

After Juror 5’s dismissal, an alternate was chosen to replace him. Canepa selected the juror at random, by having her clerk place juror names in a Michigan State University hat and selecting a name from it. She denied a motion by a defense attorney to use a different team’s hat.