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Marlin Stapleton, Lamb’s capable court-appointed defense attorney, faces an uphill battle. His game plan appears two-pronged. First, he presented evidence that numerous people in the underworld other than these defendants had motives to kill Miller. For example, he says, all PENI members were furious about Miller’s interview with Fox News. Another gangster/convict, Jesse Wyman, wanted to confront Miller for allegedly stealing a truck and, according to Stapleton, had been looking for a gun in the days before the murder. The defense attorney also claims Miller stole narcotics from the Mexican Mafia.
The D.A. says Lamb fired the fatal shot. Second—and more important to the strategy—is Billy Joe Johnson. Stapleton needs to pierce the “guilty beyond a reasonable doubt” standard for his clients by handing the jury the possibility that another person was the killer. Johnson obliges.
“I did it,” Johnson testifies on June 6. “I wasn’t real happy with the guy.”
* * *
Here is Johnson’s version of the murder: To celebrate his cousin’s birthday, he started partying in a Costa Mesa Federal Avenue residence at about 4 p.m. on March 8, 2002. There were drugs, drinking and girls. Miller eventually arrived.
“I was really pissed-off when I seen him at my cousin’s house,” Johnson says. There had been problems between the two men involving girls and the unforgivable interview about PENI identity theft and narcotics activities from a year earlier. “What the hell is up with that?”
But Johnson says he let Miller, whom he knew as a friend for at least 25 years, feel comfortable.
Sometime that night—“Uh, between probably 8 and 10, probably, something of that nature, I mean, I was doing a lot of dope”—Johnson says, he left with Miller, “driving 80 or 85 mph” on the 55 and 5 freeways to “get some heroin” near Lincoln and Euclid in Anaheim.
“As I said, I’m pretty perturbed with the guy, really had it with him,” Johnson testifies. “Walking down the alley, and we cruise, uh, getting ready to go into the apartment complex ’cause there’s, like, garages, and then there’s, like, an inlet towards the apartments. We walk in there. I just reached in my waistband and grabbed my gun and blasted him. I turned around, took off down the alley, jumped back in my Chevrolet Silverado truck and took off back to the party. I hooked up with Shirley Williams that night. I sure did. . . . It was at Doheny Beach [motel]. Actually right by Doheny Beach.”
Police found Miller, 38, face-down in a massive pool of blood. The back of his head had been blown away. The bullet lodged in his brain.
If the jury bought Johnson’s story, half of Stapleton’s problem was solved. Next hurdle: How did Rump and Lamb get Johnson’s gun?
The night after the murder, Johnson says, he was alone drinking beer at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano when he saw Lamb with a “big-titty girl.” Lamb needed a gun. He told Johnson that the Mexican Mafia had allegedly shot at PENI members a day earlier.
“I told him that the weapon was ‘hot’ when what I should have told him is that the weapon was ‘hot one,’” Johnson says. He explains to the jury that hot means stolen and hot one means a murder weapon.
Stapleton holds up the pistol and asks, “Is that the gun you gave Mr. Lamb [two days before police arrested him]?”
“Seems to be,” Johnson replies.
“Looks exactly the same?”
“Yes.”
* * *
To assist Rump and Lamb, Johnson needs to portray himself as a killer with a conscience. That’s why four years after the Miller murder, he’s finally confessing, he says. He doesn’t want to see innocent men wrongly convicted.
When Stapleton finishes lobbing softball questions at Johnson, Baytieh snaps to his feet. “You say that you’re here to set things right,” he says. “But you are not thinking about Scott Miller’s family, correct?”
“Actually, I was . . . I . . . I thought about it all, actually,” says Johnson. “I thought about his wife, which is a good friend of mine. We used to go on vacations together. He [Miller] is a good friend of mine. He stepped out of line. I mean, it is what it is.”
“You are not thinking about the criminal-justice system, correct?” Baytieh fires back as jurors watch intensely.
“I don’t care about the criminal-justice system. It’s a fucked-up system.”
“You don’t care about the judge, correct?”
“No.”
“You don’t care about the jury?”
“No.”
“You care about PENI?”
“No.”
“You care about you?”
“Yes, certainly.”
“You care about your fellow homeboys [Rump and Lamb]?”
“I am a convict.”
“And you will put your life on the line for your fellow homeboys?”
“Everybody does.”
“You will do whatever it takes to help a fellow homeboy?”
“Well, depends on what you mean. I’m not going to jump in front of a bullet for somebody. I’m certainly not going to jump in front of a knife for somebody. And I am not crazy.”
If Johnson has any credibility left, Baytieh aims to destroy it by enticing him to prove his own dishonesty. The DA gets him to repeatedly deny his connection to PENI. Then, Baytieh displays for the jury a photo of Johnson standing proudly next to a large PENI shrine in a Costa Mesa house. Johnson grows angrier. Baytieh shows Johnson his signature on a guilty plea that states he’d killed Lamon with a hammer “for the benefit of, at the direction of and in association with PENI criminal street gang.”