(The following story by Linda Deutsch appeared on the San Jose Mercury News website on July 7.)
LOS ANGELES — A cry of anguish rang from a victim’s relative as a prosecutor implored jurors Monday to recommend the death penalty for a man convicted of murdering 11 people by causing a commuter rail disaster.
Deputy District Attorney Cathryn Brougham said justice will not be served unless Juan Alvarez is sentenced to die for triggering the 2005 calamity in which a Metrolink train derailed and smashed into another commuter train in suburban Glendale.
The crash also injured 180 people.
Brougham’s remarks came at the start of the penalty phase of the proceedings attended by family members and friends of the victims.
Alvarez, 29, testified during the trial that he drove his SUV onto the train tracks and planned to be sitting inside when the train hit. But he said he changed his mind at the last minute and was unable to move the vehicle before he abandoned it.
Brougham told jurors Alvarez was concerned about no one but himself when he doused his SUV with gasoline and left it on the tracks.
“He was on a mission,” she said. “He wanted to do something big.”
The prosecutor said during the first phase of the trial that Alvarez was seeking to impress his estranged wife and actually had thoughts of killing her as well.
“He told you himself he had homicidal thoughts that morning,” Brougham told jurors Monday. “It’s not an accident that these people were murdered by him. … They were innocent, helpless, defenseless victims.”
Brougham gave jurors profiles of each of the 11 people who died, saying family members and friends would speak about the emptiness in their lives since the losses of their loved ones.
Alvarez showed no reaction as the prosecutor spoke. His lawyers said they would reserve their opening statements until after the prosecution presented its case for the death penalty.
Brougham predicted for jurors that lawyers for Alvarez would claim he was an emotionally disturbed drug addict who has suffered abuse in his childhood.
The first two prosecution witnesses, the mother and brother of a sheriff’s deputy killed in the crash, gave jurors a portrait of his life through family pictures and sometimes tearful recollections of a happy life that was cut short.
Maureen Tutino, mother of 47-year-old victim James Tutino, said her son took the train to work that day because it was raining, his knee was bothering him and he didn’t want to drive his stick shift vehicle.
She and her son, Tony, also a sheriff’s deputy, testified about the horror of learning that James was dead.
“Our whole family will never be the same,” she said. “His children miss him terribly. Christmas will never be the same. He was kind of the sunshine of our life and we miss that. He was a really special guy.”
She said James’ son, Nick, soon will be sworn in as a sheriff’s deputy and will be given his father’s badge number.
More victims’ families were scheduled to testify all week. The jury also has asked to view the remains of the train wreckage on Wednesday.