When the jury convicted Vladimir Garcia Soza of first-degree murder Wednesday, the victim's family sobbed with relief.
Soza smirked.
When corrections officers led a handcuffed Soza from the courtroom, he smiled broadly.
"You can't wipe the smile off my face," Soza said, looking directly at the family and friends of Lee "Tweety" Linares.
Jurors took just a few hours to convict Soza of shooting Linares to death outside the Bunny Ranch, a Midtown strip club.
Soza, 28, a gang member and ex-convict, will receive a life sentence with or without the possibility of parole on Nov. 13.
Soza shot Linares to death outside the club on Speedway near Alvernon Way on behalf of Raúl Maldonado, a convicted murderer against whom Linares testified almost a decade ago, Deputy Pima County Attorney Mark Diebolt told jurors.
People are also reading…
Linares' girlfriend, Sara Guerra, testified that she, Linares and Matthew Cox were about to get into Linares' vehicle when Linares was shot.
"Someone walked up behind us and said, 'Hey, Tweet,' and then he shot him and said, 'This is from Raúl,' " Guerra said.
Diebolt hinged much of his case on an enhanced surveillance video showing people entering and leaving the club.
One man is seen entering and leaving the front of the club repeatedly, wearing a white "muscle" shirt. A man wearing an identical shirt is seen from behind as he follows Linares out to his car, shoots him and flees.
Guerra, Cox and two Bunny Ranch employees all identified Soza as the man seen at the front entrance.
Cox and the employees said they assumed the man following Linares was Soza based on the shirt. Guerra wasn't asked to identify that man.
During closing arguments Tuesday, Diebolt shared with jurors a poem found in Soza's bedroom about snitches.
The last three lines read:
How can they look in a mirror or hold their heads high?
I'm sorry they yell when they're about to get hurt,
But the only good snitch is six feet under dirt.
A friend with Soza the night of the slaying was wearing a white T-shirt with a skull and crossbones that said, "Danger! No snitching!"
The friend, Ramon "Goof Troop" Ramirez, testified he left Soza at the club before the shooting, but Diebolt questioned why Ramirez would leave Soza without a ride home.
Defense attorney Harold Higgins told jurors Diebolt had no proof Soza wrote the poem or, if he did, when he wrote it; he could have written it as a teenager. He also wanted to know what Ramirez's T-shirt had to do with Soza.
Diebolt's case was built entirely on assumptions, Higgins said during closing arguments.
"The manager assumed the guy outside shooting had to have been inside, and it snow-balled from there," Higgins said.
Everyone just assumed Soza was the shooter because he just happened to be wearing a white muscle shirt that night, Higgins said.
Neither Cox nor Guerra was able to pick Soza out of a photo lineup, Higgins reminded the jurors.
While Cox did identify Soza from a photo found on a friend's MySpace account, Higgins said Soza was the only one in the picture with tattoos, and the killer had tattoos.
Guerra testified the trip to the Bunny Ranch that night was a last-minute decision, so how could Soza have known Linares was going to be there? Higgins asked.
If Maldonado wanted Soza to kill Linares so badly, why didn't Soza seek out Linares? Higgins asked.
What jurors were not told was that Maldonado and Soza served time together at the Arizona Department of Corrections.
An ADOC employee was scheduled to testify that Maldonado and Soza were housed six cells apart, but Pima County Superior Court Judge Stephen Villarreal ruled Diebolt could not put that witness on because he didn't have proper documentation to support his testimony.
In addition, Villarreal said Diebolt did not disclose that evidence in a timely manner.
