Rhetorical Flurry Ending Barton Murder Trial : Court: Defense attorney cites Davy Crockett, Galileo, and troops in the Persian Gulf in impassioned closing.

By H.G. REZA

Feb. 8, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

A prosecutor on Thursday urged jurors to convict Pacific Beach real estate agent Howard Barton of murder in the shooting death of Marco Sanchez, while Barton’s defense attorney argued that his client acted in self-defense and deserves to be acquitted.

In the first day of closing statements at the end of a two-week trial, Deputy Dist. Atty. Lisa Chappell hammered away at what the prosecution said was Barton’s malicious intent to shoot the unarmed Sanchez. She asked jurors to convict Barton of second-degree murder. Chappell will finish her closing statement today.

The deadly confrontation was initiated by a minor traffic dispute in Pacific Beach on Feb. 22, 1990, that involved Barton’s daughter, Andrea Barton, 21, and Sanchez.

Several witnesses testified during the trial that Sanchez, 24, appeared to be trying to get away from Barton, 48, by scrambling out the passenger door of his car when he was shot in the back by a single bullet fired from Barton’s automatic pistol.

Barton testified that that he fired in self-defense after Sanchez threatened him with a knife. But several prosecution witnesses testified that they never saw a weapon in Sanchez’s hand.

In her closing statement, Chappell told jurors that Sanchez was unarmed when he was shot. Although mortally wounded, he left his car and walked to the doorway of a nearby dry cleaners owned by relatives, where he collapsed and died.

Investigators found a set of keys and a baseball hat near his body. Defense attorney Milt Silverman suggested Thursday in his closing statement that Barton’s relatives may have removed the knife from his body when he collapsed in the doorway. The knife allegedly used against Barton was not identified during the trial.

However, Chappell insisted that Barton murdered Sanchez, and, on Thursday, argued for a murder conviction.

“When an unreasonable person shoots an unarmed man in the back. That is murder,” Chappell said.

“There is no way in the world, when this shot was fired (that) . . the victim presented a threat to anyone. He’s trapped inside the car. He doesn’t represent a threat to anybody,” Chappell later told the jury.

Barton had a permit from the Sheriff’s Department to carry a concealed weapon, but only when he was taking rent receipts to a bank. The fact that Barton was armed when he and Andrea Barton went looking for Sanchez after the traffic altercation shows that Barton had an intent to kill, Chappell said.

“He going to a confrontation . . . . He’s heard something inflaming from a loved one. That’s significant,” she said. “ . . . this is a man who has created a situation. His anger is accelerating. You can’t create a situation that is unreasonable because you’re a hothead.”

The prosecutor kept hammering away at what she called Barton’s unreasonable act.

“Do reasonable people track down people who have just cut off their daughter in traffic?” she asked.

Silverman, whose closing statement took about four hours, flatly said his client is innocent. He argued that Barton was justified in shooting Sanchez and had a right to stand up to the victim. Silverman added that Barton did not intend to shoot Sanchez and said the gun discharged accidentally.

“The evidence shows that Barton produced a gun in self-defense, and the gun fired as a result of a sudden movement by Sanchez. . . . Barton isn’t guilty of any crime,” Silverman said.

Silverman used a sometimes-folksy approach in his lengthy statement, occasionally resorting to humor. Jurors were exposed to a vintage Silverman, who charmed them with references to such varied characters as French philosopher Descartes, French existentialist Albert Camus, Italian astronomer Galileo, American frontiersman Davy Crockett and Western outlaw Billy the Kid.

He managed to weave all these characters, plus references to the Salem witch trials, the existence or non-existence of UFOs and epistemology (a school of philosophy that debates the origin and limits of knowledge) into his closing statement.

“You’re smarter than I am,” Silverman told the jury when talking about jurors’ ability to judge the facts in the case.

He also compared the jurors to U.S. troops fighting in the Persian Gulf War.

“Just as soldiers protect the freedom of our country, jurors protect the justice of the people,” he said.

Silverman insisted that Barton saw a knife in Sanchez’s hand. Police investigators found a folded knife, scissors and screwdriver under and near the driver’s seat of Sanchez’s car. However, the knife did not have Sanchez’s fingerprints on it.

Using an old American Indian saying, Silverman pleaded with jurors to empathize with his client.

“Who would have known when he woke up that morning (of the shooting) that by the end of the day, human blood would be shed,” Silverman said. “ . . . The Indians say that, if you want to judge another man, you should walk in his moccasins.”

Contrary to the prosecution’s claim that Barton intended to shoot Sanchez, Silverman said his client only wanted to confront his daughter’s assailant because he was concerned about her safety. Barton planned to confront Sanchez and detain him for the police, Silverman said. Any concerned parent would have reacted in the same way, he added.

“There is more than one mother and more than one father on this jury that would have done the same,” Silverman said.

He ridiculed Sanchez, who stood 6 feet tall and weighed about 235 pounds, for picking a confrontation with Andrea Barton, a petite woman.

“It would have been one thing if the person in the car had been Barton or (former Charger defensive lineman) Louie Kelcher,” he said in a loud voice. “But, it’s a, it’s a little girl,” he said, finishing the comment in a soft, barely audible voice.

Some prosecution witnesses were also singled out for ridicule by Silverman. But none provoked his wrath more than Patrick Leal, who, at the time of the shooting, managed the shoe department at Cal Stores on Garnet Avenue. It was inside that sporting goods store where Howard and Andrea Barton found Sanchez, when they went looking for him after the traffic dispute.

Leal testified that he saw a heated argument between the Bartons and Sanchez, with Howard Barton as the aggressor and shouting at Sanchez. Leal said he made notes of the confrontation.

Silverman referred to Leal as “a shoe box salesman with the great perception” and called him an uncredible witness. He suggested that Leal’s testimony was motivated by a desire for publicity.

“The shoe box salesman gets his one moment in the sun . . . to be on television and to get his name printed in the paper,” he said.

Silverman summed up his closing statement with another reference to U.S. troops.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I leave you with your duty,” he said. “It is your duty as surely as is the soldiers’ duty in the sands of Arabia.”

He told jurors that prosecutor Chappell had failed to prove that Barton did not act in self-defense when he shot Sanchez and that the shooting was not an accident.

“Self-defense and accident and misadventure are the heart of my case,” Silverman said. “The evidence does not show that at any point Barton decided to kill Sanchez. He was justified in pulling out the gun. Barton is not producing that gun to kill Sanchez. He pulled that gun to freeze Sanchez.”

Barton testified that he ordered Sanchez to drop the knife he was allegedly waving seconds before the shooting.