"Not guilty" - that was the verdict today for 22 year old Jesse James Ochoa - a man accused of participating in the torture, shooting and hanging of truck driver Emigidio Gomez - which happened on the Coastal Highway in June of 2008. The jury of 9 women and 3 men deliberated for over four hours today before declaring him not guilty of murder.
Gomez had been strangled to death and left hanging by a belt from a tree - the men wanted to steal his logging truck. In court, Ochoa gave a statement from the dock in which he said that Juan Aldana was the mastermind. He said Aldana took him to the Burrell Boom Road where Aldana identified himself to the deceased and his sideman, Cornelius Schmitt as a police officer and ordered the two men at gunpoint into his car. Ochoa said Aldana drove them to the Coastal Road - where he shot Schmitt three times, in his neck, back and abdomen. Schmitt pretended he was dead - and that saved his life. Ochoa maintained throughout that he never went down the Coastal Road with Aldana but stayed out on the Western highway. Aldana was never apprehended.
A second man Wesley Emmanuel had been charged jointly with Ochoa but was freed of the charge after a nolle pros was entered because key witness Sergeant Sinquest Martinez was not available. Emmanuel has been re-arrested and has been re-indicted on the murder charge.
