Jury Deliberates Lloyd Jr. Case in Christopher Carioscia's Death

Updated at Friday 4:05 p.m.
The jury has been released for the weekend and will resume deliberations at 9 a.m. Monday.

The four-hour defense closing statement finished Thursday in the trial of Stanley Lloyd Jr., accused in the death of El Capitan student Christopher Carioscia last year. The case is now with the jury.

Defense attorney Roland Haddad characterized some prosecution witnesses as "bimbos" and young immature kids in his statement Wednesday. Throughout the trial, he questioned whether they could remember much of anything.

On Thursday morning, he repeated his summary of the prosecution's case as a "murder novel," and once again, he jumped into the witness stand as he talked to the jury about witnesses, as he did several times Wednesday.

Deputy District Attorney David Wiliams III, in his rebuttal, told the jury that Haddad's moving into the witness stand or reading from sheets of paper as though they were transcripts did not make his statements more credible.

"The only thing that makes a statement credible is if it's true," Williams said. "He was not reading from a transcript. He spoke of a different interpretation of what he said the evidence was."

Williams told the jury that several issues Haddad raised had not been presented to the court at all.

Haddad told the jury at one point that his presentation was not going to include technology, like Williams' did. The prosecutor had gone step by step through a PowerPoint presentation.

"It's not dynamic or air-tight," Haddad said of his own delivery. He continually drove home his theme that the prosecution has come up with a "murder mystery" based on conjecture.

Williams' final words to the jury in his prosecution rebuttal Thursday morning, as a large picture of Carioscia was displayed in front of them:

"Who didn't get a trial? Who got the death penalty?

"Is it a murder mystery?

"It's not a mystery.

"It's first-degree murder."

Carioscia was 17 when his badly decomposed body was found in December 2010 in a remote area of Barona Indian Reservation, . Lloyd was arrested in March 2011 and charged with first-degree murder, as well as felony murder for the use of a firearm, believed to be a .357 magnum. If convicted, he could serve 50 years in prison.

During the trial, the "murder weapon" presented by the prosecution was placed in a clear, locked box in the middle of the courtroom. Small LED lights were added to the box to shine on the weapon from all angles. At issue in the trial is the color of the grip—under moonlight.

Some witnesses testified that Lloyd brandished a revolver at a bonfire party on a pitch black evening, about two nights after Carioscia disappeared. They said it was just before Halloween 2010.

Though it was dark, some people recalled moonlight. Witnesses testified Lloyd passed the gun around, after removing it from a bandanna. Some of them touched it and even shot it, they said. Some handled it with a piece of cloth or a sleeve. Most were inebriated or under the influence of drugs.

The "murder weapon" has a brown grip. Some witnesses recalled the revolver at the party had a grip of a lighter color, even white.

As the small lights in the box in the courtroom focused on a revolver, the jury was left to ponder, could the reflections off the metal on the grip—under moonlight—on a gun quickly passed around, sometimes covered, sometimes uncovered, have possibly made the grip look lighter? Or not?

The gun is alleged to be one of three reported . Carioscia's body contained bullets that the prosecution says match the .357 magnum. Lloyd's cousin Dustin Montiel, testifying under immunity in the preliminary hearing, stated that Lloyd was part of that robbery and that Lloyd was the one who kicked in the front door. But Montiel said Lloyd didn't take that revolver. Instead, he took a different weapon.

Montiel also testified that, after Carioscia went missing, Lloyd asked him to go with him to look for the revolver. Montiel said Lloyd asked him to take the gun with him and that it "had bodies on it."

Defense attorney Haddad argued that there's no proof the gun was ever in Lloyd's possession. He emphasized that it was in Montiel's possession. Haddad questioned the prosecution's assertion that Montiel had an alibi.

Montiel had been hospitalized and released with significant chest wounds that still needed treatment at the time Carioscia went missing, according to the prosecution.

Haddad asked the jury if they really believed the prosecution's claim that Lloyd was some "genius" plotting Carioscia's death and blaming it on Montiel.

In his rebuttal, Williams said he'd never claimed that Lloyd planned to frame Montiel and that he thought Montiel was just a convenient "patsy" for Lloyd. He also said Lloyd tried to remove or cover any fingerprints on the gun by having everyone handle it at the party. Some people testified that Lloyd threw the gun toward some trees at the end of the gathering.

During the trial, young people were called to the witness stand, in front of the accused and his family and friends, to testify about the robbery, the guns, the drinking, the drugs, the partying. Some had their parents in the courtroom. During the preliminary hearing, some were brought in through a door behind the judge, so they did not have to walk through a hallway filled with raw emotion between two families: the family of the deceased and the family of the accused.