Burritto Frees Man After 2 Years
Los Angeles Times Release

A Los Angeles jury acquitted a college student of murder, persuaded in part by a 2-year-old burrito discovered in the defendant's jacket pocket at the trial's close.

Edward Vasquez, 23, was accused of killing Israel Martinez, a 42 year old security guard, after an argument in a Los Angeles parking lot in September 1988. Prosecutors said Vasquez was wearing a white T-shirt at the time.

The defendant insisted he was not the killer. He claimed that he was not wearing a white T-shirt and that he was a short but critical distance away from the gun battle. Vasquez said he was wearing a green jacket and as the gunfire erupted, he was buying a burrito from a canteen truck parked on the other side of the lot.

The jury had already begun deliberations when, after a sleepless night, Vasquez remembered to tell his attorney that he had felt something strange "Like there was something heavy in the right pocket" - when he had tried it on for the jury during the trial.

The jacket had been seized as evidence at the time of Vasquez's arrest and kept in law enforcement custody. Vasquez had been wounded in the buttocks - he claimed by a stray bullet - and different interpretations of the jacket's absence of blood were advanced in the case.

The prosecution contended in the two-week trial that if Vasquez had been wearing the jacket, as he claimed, it would have been bloody. Vasquez's attorney, Jay Jaffe, asked the defendant to put on the jacket for jurors to show that it reached only to his waist.

On Friday, Jaffe asked to re-examine the jacket and discovered the burrito. The jury was summoned and Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Stanley Weisberg allowed Jaffe to reopen his final arguments, citing, "newly found evidence."

"He didn't shoot the security guard," Jaffe boomed to the jurors, "and this proves it."

As he spoke, the lawyer waved the foil-wrapped, apparently well-preserved burrito before the jurors.

On Tuesday, the jury announced a verdict of acquittal.

Later, jurors said the burrito presentation had heightened their concerns about "inconsistencies in the testimony" in the prosecution's case. They said they had split 8 to 4 for acquittal before the burrito was retrieved.

Vasquez was freed on $10,000 bail shortly after his arrest. But he said that he was forced to drop out of the California State University at Los Angeles, and that his family had mortgaged all they owned to help pay for his defense.