People v. Chavez

On November 10, 1998, at about 9 p.m., a car pulled up next to where Francisco Rodriguez and John Sparks were walking. A man in the car asked them: “Who’s got the weed?” When the two men stopped and looked toward the car, the man who asked the question fired a gun at them four or five times. Rodriguez was struck in the head, fatally.

Defendant Raul Chavez was arrested three days later. He was tried before a jury for the first degree murder of Rodriguez. He was found guilty of that charge and sentenced to 45 years in prison.

Chavez raises several issues in this appeal, but we focus only on one…