Two idiot, gun-toting Anaheim hoodlums with the Jeffrey Street criminal street gang carjacked a poor, working class family in February 2009 and then kidnapped them back to their home where they stole laundry quarters, computers, jewelry and $100 in cash from a wallet.
Proving his brilliance, Humberto Alatorre called out his partner-in-crime's gang moniker, Flaco, in front of the victims before fleeing.
Because cops already knew Flaco was Jeffrey Street gangster Martin Martinez Magana it didn't take them long to arrive at his home.
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Can you imagine what Flaco had in his bedroom?
That's right: some of the stolen loot.
In September 2011, an Orange County jury agreed with prosecutors that Magana, who beat one of the victims with a gun, was guilty of 14 felonies and enhancements including robbery, gang membership, illegal use of a weapon, assault and carjacking.
Superior Court Judge Richard F. Toohey sentenced him to prison, but Magana appealed, claiming that his trial wasn't fair. He insists that he can't be guilty of both robbery and carjacking because his actions culminated from the same intent.
This week, a California Court of Appeal based in Santa Ana considered his complaint and ruled for the government after finding “substantial evidence supports the [trial] courts finding the carjacking was divisible from the robbery [for sentencing purposes].”
The justices did however acknowledge that he'd been cheated out of 10 days of credit for pre-sentencing time served in the Orange County Jail.
Upshot: Magana, 34, will continue to serve his 15 years to life sentence at California State Prison in Imperial.
Alatorre, 37, is serving a 7-year sentence at the California Men's Colony at San Luis Obispo.
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.
