He executed 3 Pasco friends in a cornfield. His lawyer says there’s no evidence it was premeditated

Jurors who convicted a Umatilla man in the execution-style killing of three people didn’t have a clear picture of what happened in that rural Benton County cornfield, an appellate lawyer said Thursday.

There was no DNA evidence, no shoe or finger prints, nothing to prove that Francisco J. Resendez Miranda was responsible for shooting the Pasco friends or that he was even there in August 2014.

What evidence was found was never connected to a specific person. Attorney Tanesha La Trelle Canzater called them “Individuals A, B and C.”

So when it was time for the jury to deliberate after a three-week trial, they should have been allowed to consider an alternative charge for Resendez Miranda.

“The evidence was such that we don’t know what happened on the farm. We don’t have eyewitnesses in the case,” Canzater told three state Court of Appeals judges at hearing in Walla Walla.

Resendez Miranda was convicted of three counts of aggravated first-degree murder. His new lawyer argued that jurors should have had the option of second-degree murder.

Canzater, a Bellingham attorney representing Resendez Miranda on his appeal, and Benton County Prosecutor Andy Miller argued the case during a hearing on the Walla Walla University campus in College Place.

The court, which is based in Spokane, went on the road for the afternoon to hear arguments in four cases from southeastern Washington.

Chief Judge George B. Fearing of the Tri-Cities said they picked the site because it is his alma mater.

Canzater is asking the court to reverse Resendez Miranda’s conviction and grant him a new trial in Benton County Superior Court.

Fearing and fellow judges, Laurel Siddoway and Rebecca L. Pennell, did not rule Thursday. The court typically takes a few months to issue a written opinion.

Resendez Miranda, now 26, did not attend the hearing. He was about three miles away at the Washington State Penitentiary, where he’s serving a mandatory life sentence.

Jurors took nearly 15 hours over three days in November 2015 to reach guilty verdicts in the deaths of David Perez-Saucedo, Abigail Torres-Renteria and Victoria Torres.

They also found the aggravating circumstance that the crime involved several victims.

However, the jury did not find that Resendez Miranda knew Torres-Renteria was almost nine months pregnant when she was killed. In Washington, a murder charge cannot be filed for an unborn baby.

Perez-Saucedo reportedly went to Resendez Miranda’s apartment Aug. 8, 2014, to burglarize it. The two women went along believing they were going to a party, Miller said.

Resendez Miranda ended up catching Perez-Saucedo in the act.

Hours later, a worker checking the irrigation circles on Easterday Farms in southeastern Benton County found Perez-Saucedo’s SUV and the bodies nearby.

Perez-Saucedo, 22, and Torres-Renteria, 23, were shot to death, while Torres, 19, was shot once and then strangled with a belt after she tried to run from her attackers.

The revolver has not been found.

Though Resendez Miranda was the only person charged in the crime, law enforcement and prosecutors have said it is clear he didn’t kill the trio by himself. A person can be convicted of first-degree murder whether he is the principal perpetrator or an accomplice.

Investigators have been looking for his father and two brothers for questioning.

Fidel Miranda-Huitron, 53, Eduardo Miranda-Resendiz, 26, and Fernando de Jesus Miranda-Resendiz, 21, are believed to have left the country for Mexico shortly after the slayings.

Shane Silverthorn, who represented Resendez Miranda at the trial, asked that jurors be given the option of the lesser charge of second-degree murder.

Silverthorn said at the time that the three victims may have been taken into the rural field to be intimidated or threatened following the apartment break-in. He added that Resendez Miranda, if he was there that night, might not have known a murder was going to be committed.

At the trial, Judge Bruce Spanner denied the request, giving jurors the choice of aggravated first-degree murder or nothing.

On Thursday, Canzater continued Silverthorn’s argument before the appellate judges. She said Spanner abused his discretion by not granting the defense request.

At one point, Judge Siddoway noted that if prosecutors had not proven the murders were premeditated, then the jury would have acquitted the defendant.

There is no evidence in favor of the argument that something happened in the field that suddenly caused Resendez Miranda to kill the trio, she said.

Judge Fearing also questioned if the lack of evidence of any struggle by the victims precludes the giving of a jury instruction for second-degree murder.

Canzater replied that while the deaths of Perez-Saucedo and Torres-Renteria appear premeditated, Torres tried to escape before she was shot and then strangled.

“We don’t know what precipitated her to run,” Canzater said. “… Irrespective of what we do know, there’s a lot that we don’t know and the jury should be allowed to make those inferences of what happened and it should be in the light most favorable to Mr. Miranda.”

Judge Pennell asked about the statements Resendez Miranda made that he was at the murder scene and shot the victims.

Canzater told the judges to look at the sources of that evidence and their credibility, saying one person was in jail when they claimed to have heard the statement.

Miller was asked about the second-degree murder proposal. He explained that Spanner, after listening to all the testimony and evidence, put it best when he said he could not imagine any scenario where it was not premeditation and the alternative charge would apply.

The prosecutor said the judges should not look at one victim in isolation, because the three friends were all taken from the same Umatilla convenience store at the same time and killed in the same cornfield in the same area.

“I don’t think there’s any evidence to show that any of these three (deaths) was anything but first-degree murder,” Miller said. “It is hard to imagine how you find David’s death is not premeditated with two gunshots. … I also want to say when you point a gun 2 feet from somebody’s head and take the action of pulling a trigger, I certainly think that’s premeditation too.”

Canzater also argued the trial court “aroused the jury’s passion and created prejudice” by allowing jurors to see an autopsy picture of Torres-Renteria’s body with the near-term baby still in her womb.

The jury and even the judge had visible reactions to that picture, which “was completely inflammatory,” she said.

But Judge Fearing questioned if that argument is moot since the jury said they didn’t believe Resendez Miranda knew Torres was pregnant.

Miller emphasized that Dr. Daniel Selove, the forensic pathologist, is the one who picked the photographs and both sides knew he was going to use that one during testimony.

This story was originally published October 19, 2017 at 8:23 PM with the headline "He executed 3 Pasco friends in a cornfield. His lawyer says there’s no evidence it was premeditated."