LAKE COUNTY – On Wednesday the First Appellate Court denied the appeal of a man convicted of the brutal 2002 murder of a Clearlake woman.
In a 28-page unpublished decision, the three-justice panel said they weren't persuaded by 28-year-old Edward James Munoz's arguments that another man was responsible for the March 2002 murder of 26-year-old Leah Leister.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Richard Hinchcliff, who prosecuted the case over several difficult years, said he was very pleased with the appellate court's ruling. “I think that it was the appropriate decision.”
The Munoz case had gone through numerous canceled trial dates and a mistrial before the conviction on first-degree murder, with special allegations of criminal street gang membership and use of a deadly weapon – in this case, a knife – was handed down in June of 2007. Three months later, he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Hinchcliff presented evidence in court that showed that Munoz, a Norteno gang member, was ordered by gang leaders at Pelican Bay State Prison to kill Leister over drug dealings.
Munoz and another man went to Leister's Clearlake apartment, where he stabbed her 17 times in the neck, chest and extremities. Her arms and legs also were duct-taped and a plastic bag was put over her head, all while her 5-year-old son slept in the next room and with a female friend sleeping on the living room couch.
Hinchcliff called it “a horrible crime.”
“This is one of the worst cases I've ever taken to a jury trial,” he said.
In his appeal, Munoz argued that another man had killed Leister.
However, in the spring of 2004, Munoz had apparently bragged to another inmate in the Lake County Jail that he had killed Leister and that he planned to blame a man who was with him that night. Munoz allegedly tried to hire the jail inmate to kill his girlfriend and his young son for $5,000 plus some met amphetamine, saying he was angry that his girlfriend had told police he had come home that night covered in blood.
Munoz, who is American Indian, further argued that the prosecution had excused Native American jurors because of their race, and said he was wrongly identified as a Norteno gang member.
The appellate court found that the Native American juror candidates were dismissed for race-neutral reasons, and ruled that the evidence presented properly confirmed the gang membership of Munoz, who had reportedly told law enforcement in both 1999 and 2002 that he was a Norteno gang member. He also had been involved with them while incarcerated at the California Youth Authority.
“Much of the gang evidence was relevant to the charged offense itself because it supplied a motive for the killing,” the justices said.
“Hopefully this will bring some relief and some closure to the victim's family that was left behind,” said Hinchcliff.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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