By Catherine Hamilton
RIVERSIDE, CA – A quadruple-homicide jury trial was delayed further Monday here in Riverside County Superior Court when the defense argued that the Miranda rights of Jose Larin-Garcia were violated through a coercive operation by law enforcement.
The jury will decide whether Larin-Garcia gets life in prison without parole, or the death penalty. Larin-Garcia was arrested in Feb. 2019 for possession of a large capacity magazine.
Deputy Public Defender John Dolan said that, based on the charge, Larin-Garcia should have been cited and released, but was rather held in custody.
Hours later, according to PD Dolan, Larin-Garcia was charged with four murders that happened in Palm Springs. Larin-Garcia asked for a lawyer both before and after confessing in what is known as a “Perkins Operation.”
According to an Orange County District Attorney’s policy manual, a “Perkins Operation” is an undercover operation during which an agent attempts to elicit an incriminating statement from a suspect by acting as another inmate.
When a Perkins agent is involved, a person’s Miranda rights are not violated; however, in PD Dolan’s argument, he stated that Larin-Garcia was tag-teamed by sheriffs and Perkins agents to coerce him into a confession.
Deputy District Attorney Samantha Paixao and another prosecutor—not listed on the Riverside Court website—rebutted that conversations between incarcerated suspects and undercover agents acting as inmates do not violate a suspect’s Miranda rights.
According to the prosecution, since Larin-Garcia was not aware that the Perkins agent was undercover, and he confessed in a space that cannot be labeled as coercive.
The defense filed its brief to the court, the day that they spoke, on the perceived violation. PD Dolan cited the late filing because of being sick the previous week, and the difficulty in getting a reliable transcript from the operation.
However, the DDA said that it was unlikely to have been that difficult to get a transcript, because the defense counsel was provided with recordings of the operation on three different devices.
PD Dolan further believes that the police used coercive tactics on Larin-Garcia in their threatening of his mother. They said that since she helped him, she would also be “screwed.”
According to PD Dolan, Larin-Garcia is very close with his mother, and therefore threatening her was psychologically pressuring. He said that Larin-Garcia had stated previously that his mother “was the only person who loved him.”
However, both Judge Anthony Villalobos and the prosecution argued that such a statement is not a threat, and that it is reasonable to believe that if Larin-Garcia’s mother did help him in either committing or covering up the murders, she would be incriminated as well.
Judge Villalobos also said that Miranda does not prohibit taking advantage of misplaced trust.
He explained Miranda has never been applied to conversations between an inmate and an undercover agent because Miranda warnings serve to get rid of the coercive effect of custodial questioning; with a cell inmate acting as an undercover agent, the coercive atmosphere is absent.
The attorney working on behalf of the prosecution with DDA Paixao claimed that the defense was being disingenuous for the day’s hearing, and that he misrepresented his purpose. He further said that a competent defense attorney would have filed these reports earlier in the process, and not the day that he planned to comment on them.
Another defense attorney working with PD Dolan said that the prosecution “calling defense disingenuous [was] despicable” and unnecessary in court. The judge agreed, asking both sides to refrain from making underhanded statements.
However, the judge did acknowledge that the case is regarding “the death penalty, everyone’s heated, it’s a very high-stakes case.”
Opening statements, after being moved twice, are set for Nov. 29.
