Convicted killer thought prosecutor was joking about life sentence

Gregorio Luna Luna has been locked up since 2010 for stabbing his longtime girlfriend in the heart, just moments after their young son was whisked out of a Pasco apartment.

On Thursday — five years to the date when he was sentenced for the murder — Luna Luna, 37, said he thought it was a joke when the prosecutor him he would spend the rest of his life in prison.

“Please tell me why you thought I was joking?” asked special prosecutor Andy Miller, referencing proceedings in 2012 in Franklin County Superior Court.

“Because most of the time the things I would hear in court, I found them to be a joke …,” Luna Luna testified through a Spanish-speaking interpreter. “I don’t know. I have never found myself in a situation like this.”

Luna Luna claims that the standing plea offer he had in the 1 1/2 years leading up to trial was never properly communicated to him in Spanish, either by his attorneys or through an interpreter.

He said he didn’t understand that by rejecting the offer to admit first-degree murder with a 35-year sentence, he risked a mandatory life term, because prosecutors would amend the charge to aggravated first-degree murder just before trial.

Miller, who originally prosecuted Luna Luna, reminded the convicted killer Thursday that he was present in the courtroom when the new charge was filed.

Miller told him at the time he “will die in prison, as opposed to having the possibility of getting out of prison under the original information.”

Luna Luna acknowledged that sometimes he “would not pay attention to what was said in court.” He added that he heard Miller make that statement years ago, but “don’t understand many of those words.”

Luna Luna lost his traditional appeal in September 2014. Now he is seeking relief with a personal restraint petition, and again trying to get the conviction reversed.

A personal restraint petition is designed to point out new information that was not available to the defense, or a new law that has come into effect since the appeal was finalized.

Luna Luna’s petition says his due process rights were violated because he was not provided with written Spanish translations of charging documents and the plea offer, and that he had ineffective assistance of counsel.

In reviewing the petition and the record, Acting Chief Judge Robert Lawrence-Berrey with the state Court of Appeals found that “unresolved material factual issues exist” and sent the case back to to Superior Court for a rare reference hearing.

The appellate court wants answers to two questions: Did defense attorneys Shelley Ajax and Karla Kane Hudson communicate the offer in Spanish so that Luna Luna understood the specifics and the risks? To what extent did Luna Luna make an informed decision to reject the offer and go to trial on the amended charge?

Ajax and Kane Hudson were told that attorney-client privilege was waived for the purpose of Thursday’s hearing, and were ordered to provide any relevant records.

Both attorneys and Luna Luna testified before Judge Vic VanderSchoor, who didn’t issue a ruling Thursday.

Instead, Miller and Luna Luna’s lawyer, Sarah McFadden of Kennewick, have to submit proposed written findings of fact to VanderSchoor, who will sign the preferred order and send it on to the appellate court.

Miller, the Benton County prosecutor, and his deputy, Anita Petra, have handled the case because of a conflict with the Franklin County Prosecutor’s Office. Franklin County Prosecutor Shawn Sant was Luna Luna’s initial defense attorney.

It took a Franklin County jury just 90 minutes to convict Luna Luna of killing Griselda Ocampo Meza, 21.

Ocampo Meza and Luna Luna dated for seven years and had a son together when she ended the relationship in January 2010. She filed her first of two requests for a protection order the following month after a series of assaults by Luna Luna.

Then, while Luna Luna was sitting in the Tacoma detention center awaiting a deportation hearing, he wrote threatening letters to his ex saying he was “going to finish the job.”

Luna Luna was sent back to Mexico on May 1, 2010, but recrossed the border sometime in the following 22 days. He stole a car from a Snohomish friend May 23, drove to the Tri-Cities, confronted Ocampo Meza that night at a Kennewick restaurant, and hours later broke into her Pasco apartment.

Ocampo Meza had changed the locks since he moved out earlier in the year, but Luna Luna took a key from her roommates as they left for work before 4 a.m. May 24.

The former couple fought long enough for their 5-year-old son to be rushed out of the home by Ocampo Meza’s new boyfriend before she was stabbed once in the chest with a kitchen knife. She died before she could get to a hospital.

Luna Luna was arrested 11 hours later at a vacant east Pasco home, but didn’t believe she was dead until a detective showed him pictures of her body. He said he acted in self-defense.

Kane Hudson, who was born in Peru, said she spoke Spanish with Luna Luna from the start of the case until he asked to have an interpreter present at their meetings.

She first reviewed the plea offer with Luna Luna in August 2010. “At the time, my client was not willing to plead to anything where he admitted any intentional act against Griselda,” she said, looking back at her notes from that conversation.

Both Kane Hudson and Ajax testified that they periodically discussed the offer with their client, and every time he turned it down.

Kane Hudson added that after discussing the consequences with Luna Luna one time, he said he “would rather stay in prison (for the) rest of his life than admit he killed her.”

The month before his trial, Luna Luna filed a complaint with the state Bar Association against Kane Hudson and Ajax.

Luna Luna — who said he had help from other jail inmates — wrote that his attorneys “are now pressuring me to sign a plea bargain because they said if we take the case to trial, they are assuring me we will lose the case. … Please, I need your assistance as soon as possible. A life sentence is at stake.”

This story was originally published March 30, 2017 at 7:58 PM with the headline "Convicted killer thought prosecutor was joking about life sentence."