Did Salvador Alejandro Sanchez fire on Kenneth French and his parents in haste after French slugged him at the Costco in Corona in 2019? Or was he heroically protecting the toddler son in his arms?
As a trained Los Angeles Police Department officer, shouldn’t he have been more aware of potentially innocent bystanders when he pulled out his service weapon and fired 10 times? Or was it a legitimate reaction to what Sanchez perceived as a deadly threat?
Had the threat passed, or did Sanchez perceive imminent danger from the 32-year-old intellectually disabled man whom relatives described as “a gentle giant,” and who one witness said was clenching his fists and appearing angry after the punch as Sanchez sat on the deli floor alongside the toddler son he had been holding?
Was Sanchez, who was off duty and not in uniform, shooting to kill or shooting to end the threat when he killed French and wounded his parents?
Testimony during the trial was the basis for nuanced closing arguments about whether Sanchez’s actions met the standard for self-defense: what a reasonable person would do given the same circumstances.
In the end, the jurors at the Larson Justice Center in Indio told Superior Court Judge Jason L. Stone that they were unable to reach a unanimous decision on the charges of voluntary manslaughter and assault with a firearm after hearing highly nuanced arguments from state Deputy Attorney General Mike Murphy and defense attorney Michael Schwartz.
A mistrial was declared on Thursday, Jan. 18, and the state Attorney General’s Office will have to decide whether to retry the case with a new jury. A hearing has been set for Feb. 13.
Schwartz said in an interview that jurors were deadlocked in favor of acquittal.
“I don’t think (the deadlock) is a surprise to most people,” Laurie Levenson, a professor of law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and a former federal prosecutor, said Friday. “It’s hard to get a conviction with facts like these where jurors could go either way on whether he was reasonable in his fears and use of self-defense.”
Levenson said it’s also difficult to obtain convictions against police officers “because jurors typically give them the benefit of the doubt.”
Communications from the jurors to Stone suggested that they were struggling to reach a verdict. They submitted seven questions. The content was confidential, but Stone referred jurors to specific sections of the jury instructions that included the definitions of self-defense and voluntary manslaughter. Another section said they had to consider each count separately.
The definition of self-defense in the instructions required jurors to do some mind-reading and establish a definition of “reasonable” for themselves.
“Belief in future harm is not sufficient, no matter how great or how likely the harm is believed to be. The defendant must have believed there was imminent danger of bodily injury. Defendant’s belief must have been reasonable. If the defendant used more force than was reasonable, the defendant did not act in self-defense,” the instructions said.
The Riverside County District Attorney’s Office initially investigated the June 14, 2019 shooting. District Attorney Mike Hestrin asked the court to convene a criminal grand jury to review the case. Those jurors did not indict Sanchez.
“I just think it’s the kind of case where it was a tragedy but it wasn’t a crime, and at this point, they put it in front of a (Riverside County) grand jury and there was no indictment, and they put it in front of a jury and there was no conviction, and at this point, all parties should be allowed to move on,” Schwartz said.
The Attorney General’s Office, in response to an inquiry Thursday, did not address whether it planned to retry Sanchez.
Levenson said prosecutors typically retry cases only when they believe they have a good chance of winning. If Schwartz was correct that jurors were leaning toward acquittal, that could make the state hesitate to retry the case “unless they come across some startling new evidence.”
Hestrin, who still could have charged Sanchez, theoretically could still file charges. His office had not responded to that question as of Friday afternoon.
The Attorney General’s Office charged Sanchez in 2021.
At the time, David Winslow, an attorney who represented Sanchez in the LAPD’s administrative investigation that culminated in his dismissal in July 2020, said Sanchez was not guilty of any crime.
“The arrest of Sal Sanchez is a product of the politically motivated program by the California attorney general to prosecute police officers,” Winslow said then.
Jurors were given the case in the monthlong trial on Dec. 27. The deliberations were interrupted because of scheduling issues in early January, and jurors did not reconvene until Thursday.
Sanchez, 33, faced up to 33 years in prison if convicted on all counts, Murphy said.
French was non-verbal and had received mental health treatment. He slugged Sanchez in an apparently unprovoked attack as they waited for sausage samples. Sanchez went down hard, pulled out his gun and fired in a volley that prompted panicked Friday night shoppers to flee outside and into food coolers.
Corona police arrived within four minutes. Sanchez, in the body-worn camera video, is seen sitting on the deli floor without any visible injuries. He told officers that he believed he saw a flash and that he had been shot. Sanchez said he believed he was knocked unconscious when he hit his head on the floor and that he saw his attacker holding a gun, so he fired his service weapon.
French was struck four times and his parents once each.
Sanchez was then helped up and was escorted outside, unassisted. He was examined at a hospital and prescribed painkillers, according to Schwartz.
Murphy took on Sanchez’s account on several fronts.
Murphy said anyone carrying a gun loaded with 13 bullets should have been more responsible. Murphy accused Sanchez of fabricating the belief that he had been shot to avoid prosecution. Murphy pointed out to jurors that despite Sanchez believing that he’d been injured in the head, he was able to clearly recollect the events for police.
And Murphy repeatedly insisted that Sanchez should have taken a moment to assess exactly what happened. The District Attorney’s Office determined that 3.8 seconds elapsed between the punch and the first shot. Had Sanchez realized he had been slugged and not shot, Murphy said, French would be alive and his parents would not have been wounded.
Murphy said the danger had passed after the punch and that Sanchez was defending a threat that no longer existed.
Schwartz countered that had Sanchez waited and the threat had been real that Sanchez and his son could have been killed. Schwartz said Sanchez fired not to kill, but to preserve the lives of himself and his son. Once the threat was ended, he stopped shooting.
In 2022, a federal jury awarded $17 million to French’s parents in a civil case. Jurors found Sanchez was acting in his role as a police officer — which made the city of Los Angeles liable for paying for most of the damages — when he fired on the Frenches.
