Word: coronas
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Juan Corona's hands convulsively grabbed the defense table as he heard the jury's verdict on the first count: "Guilty." Then, for nearly half an hour, the ritual went on. The judge read out the name of a murdered farm worker, then intoned the jury's verdict: "Guilty of murder in the first degree." Each time -25 times, the number of victims in the worst series of murders in U.S. history the jury responded in unison: "Yes." At the sixth or seventh count. Corona's wife Gloria broke into sobs. When it was over...
Police had first suspected Corona, a Mexican-born farm-labor contractor, when his name appeared on market receipts that were discovered in two of the crude graves that yielded up hacked and bludgeoned bodies near Yuba City, Calif. Two butcher knives, a machete, a pistol, a Levi's jacket and a pair of shorts were all found with bloodstains in various places used by Corona. A key piece of evidence, said the prosecution, was a ledger in his garage with the names of seven of the victims in it. But none of the blood was ever linked...
...cost of several thousand dollars, the state built a 7-ft. by 10-ft. map of the area, complete with blinking lights marking each gravesite, only to have police witnesses give varying locations for five graves. Another witness could not say when he had seen Corona near a grave, though he had earlier given police an exact date. (Corona himself said he was sick in bed when some of the murders were committed.) As the contradictions piled up, Judge Richard Patton repeatedly summoned the lawyers into his chambers to thrash out problems. Patton has done most of the thrashing, citing...
...Hawk, that seemed enough to get Corona out on bail-after more than 500 days of incarceration (and two heart attacks). Indeed, at the courtroom hearing, with the jury absent, Judge Patton excoriated the prosecution for what "almost approaches dereliction of duty. I just don't understand how [the case] could have been prepared in this manner." Then Prosecutor Williams claimed he no longer had reasonable doubt, partly because he had just found that he really did have tire tracks that matched Corona's truck after all; the correct tire-track specimen had simply been mislaid...
...refused bail, and the trial goes on. Hawk will continue to argue that inexperienced authorities panicked under the glare of publicity. He claims that the murders probably were committed by a homosexual (some of the bodies were found with pants down) and points out that Corona has been found to be "hopelessly heterosexual...