6DCA Oral Argument - 2025/12/11 Afternoon Session - Dec 11, 2025

argument

6DCA Oral Argument - 2025/12/11 Afternoon Session

California Sixth District Court of Appeal 56 min 8 chapters transcribed 7 days ago official recording ↗

▲ 0

Transcript

jump: chapters · find in transcript

Transcript

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

What is the opening statement and who are the parties appearing in this oral argument?

Unknown 0:14

And is it is it is pretty much a guarantee that Damon's gonna get the P slot? Uh I haven't I haven't I I think they're I haven't heard any rumors up there of him moving outside, so it's it's his, I think it's his. Did Brian put in point? No, no, I don't think I think they have it all, yeah. With a pecking moment.

Unknown 1:11

Okay, so Can't even have a you can't even have a computer up with the desk unless you tell them.

Unknown 1:39

All right, the Court of Appeal for the Sixth Appellate District is not session. I mean presenting Justice the Honorable Adrian F. Rover. So say Justice the Honorable Daniel H. Bomber. Justice Program. Good afternoon. Uh please be seated. Welcome to our afternoon calendar here at the sixth district court of appeal. We appreciate um You being here, uh obviously and being here in person. Um we also appreciate Council's um cooperation here. We know that argument was initially waived, but uh it's always helpful to hear uh from you as well. So we do have the one matter on calendar today, um Garcia Torres. Uh and I will invite both counsel to state your appearances. Um there was a request for additional time, so each of you will have primarily twenty minutes to argue and then um

Unknown 2:29

Uh, Pellant will have uh ten minutes for rebuttal as well. So if you would state your appearances at the lector and that way our streaming and recording will take you up both way.

Dana Lynn Pritz 2:39

May it please the court. Dana Lynn Pritz on behalf of appellant Antalon Garcia Torres. And with the court's permission, I think to be safe if I could have twenty two to present and eight for rebuttal. Um Very good. Thank you. Appreciate.

Unknown 2:54

Thank you. And for the people. Good afternoon, your Honors. May the please accord Eva Medeo for the people. And thank you. So, Miss Prince, whenever you're ready you can go ahead.

Dana Lynn Pritz 3:09

Thank you, and I wanna thank the court for the focus letter and get right to it. We believe the evidence here shows both that the court abused its discretion in denying severance and that consolidation actually resulted in gross unfairness amounting to a due process violation. And the court considers the same four factors for either test, all of which favored severance. The first factor is whether the evidence is cross admissible, and that of course depends upon the similarities between the prior Safeway offenses and Sierra's disappearance. They're not similar enough to show intent or motive and I detailed the similarities in the briefing so I don't want to belabor points I've already made. I just wanted to highlight a few.

Dana Lynn Pritz 3:51

The Safeway attacks involved grown women. Sierra was fifteen. The Safeway assaults occurred at night in the dark. Sierra went missing in the morning in di broad daylight. The assailant in the safeway attacks was on foot where Sierra was believed to have left by car, and the offenses were three years apart. The features the people claim that these offenses have in common are either too generic To be relevant or require speculation. For example, females in public in the same city. These are all too generic to prove anything. And then there are facts we don't know that require speculation. For example, we don't know if the person who abducted Sierra used force or was armed. We're not even sure she was abducted.

Dana Lynn Pritz 4:37

Perhaps she left voluntarily or under false pretenses. The dissimilarities are significant while any commonalities are generic or speculative. But the DA convinced the trial court that all these offenses were cross admissible because they all involved a so called common sexual motive. The problem which I cannot overemphasize enough Is that there's no evidence to support this so called motive. It is completely untethered to any actual evidence in the case. Now The trial court should have recognized this for the simple fact that we don't know what happened to Sierra. Commonalities between offenses have to be based on evidence. They can't be based on unsubstantiated speculative theories. And it's a huge stretch in my opinion to claim that these very brief safeway encounters were attempted kidnappings where the perpetrator attempted to carjack to take these women to a remote location to sexually assault them.