Arguments End; Famalaro’s Life Hangs in Balance

SANTA ANA —  A jury heard compelling yet sharply contrasting closing arguments Monday as to whether John J. Famalaro deserves to live or die for kidnapping, sexually assaulting and murdering Newport Beach resident Denise Huber.

The victim’s parents, Dennis and Ione Huber, sobbed during parts of Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher Evans’ remarks to a packed courtroom, particularly when the prosecutor showed the jury photos of their daughter’s nude, bludgeoned and handcuffed body, which Famalaro had stored in a freezer for three years.

Evans spoke of Famalaro’s “two sides” and as he displayed the disturbing photos said, “This is the other half of that life of his.”

The prosecutor spoke of the “unimaginable terror” the 23-year-old Huber must have felt during the last moments of her life, “a life of promise and choices ahead of her.” She encountered Famalaro on June 3, 1991, after her car had a flat tire on the Corona del Mar Freeway on her way home from a rock concert.

Evans said Huber’s killer does not deserve the jury’s compassion, despite a troubled childhood well chronicled during the trial’s penalty phase.

Picking up the heavy roofer’s nail puller and the hammer used to kill the victim, the prosecutor said, “Ask yourself what compassion he showed Denise Huber when he beat the life out of her with this nail puller and this hammer.”

Evans noted the aggravating aspects of the murder, during which the victim received 31 blows to the head. He said Famalaro was not remorseful for the killing and kept the victim’s body as a trophy.

During the defense’s closing arguments, Leonard Gumlia and Denise Gragg, deputy public defenders, said their client should be spared execution. They noted his lack of a criminal record, the emotional abuse he suffered as a child, his psychological problems and his state of emotional despair at the time of Huber’s murder.

“A life sentence can never be seen as wrong,” Gumlia said. “The death penalty is reserved for those who kill and enjoy it. Not for someone who becomes sick by their own actions.”

Gumlia challenged Evans’ remark that his client had no remorse, saying Famalaro “was bothered by what he did. He is still bothered by what he did and he will always be bothered by what he did.”

Gragg told the jury of nine women and three men that Famalaro’s “frighteningly hurtful” childhood needs to be taken into consideration.

“It doesn’t make what he did right,” she said. “It doesn’t mean what he did was OK or excusable, but it’s a reason not to kill him.”

Neither defense attorney minced words when discussing Famalaro’s 71-year-old mother, Anne, whose behavior dominated the trial’s penalty phase and Monday’s closing remarks.

“There is something about the personality of that woman,” Gumlia said. “The eyes, the voice, the mood changes. It can actually frighten you at times. That is a powerful, powerful human being. [The jury] only got her for three hours. [Famalaro] got her every day.”

Gragg recapped incidents such as the mother choking her older son’s girlfriends, pushing her elderly mother down stairs, listening outside the bedroom door in efforts to catch her sons masturbating and putting their Santa Ana house up for sale because “the Russians were coming.”

“Anne Famalaro was beyond being bad or mean,” Gragg said. “She was crazy.”

But Evans said Anne Famalaro cannot be seen as an excuse for her youngest son’s actions.

“She doesn’t get ‘mom of the year,’ ” Evans said. “She was a bad mother in many respects. . . . She didn’t teach the defendant to hurt people. She didn’t instruct him to kill.”

He added: “If he had killed his mother . . . we might say, ‘You know what? Mitigation is stronger.’ He picked a stranger. We are not in a case where he killed the person who oppressed him.”

Gragg told the jury that while they could have compassion for the victim and her grief-stricken parents, the trial is not about “fixing the Hubers’ pain.”

“This is not a life-the-Hubers-lose, death-the-Hubers-win kind of game,” she said.

Gragg said Denise Huber’s murder was committed by a man who fought his own “inner demons” and struggled throughout his life to fit in. She said the sentence should be reflective of Famalaro’s entire life and not just the murder he was convicted last month of committing.

The closing arguments lasted all day and the jury received instructions from Superior Court Judge John J. Ryan before leaving. They will begin their deliberations at 9 a.m. today.