The Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office is preparing for another trial for Antolin Garcia Torres, after an appeals court overturned his conviction for murdering Morgan Hill teen Sierra LaMar.
Garcia Torres will again be tried on a charge of first degree murder, and the new trial must begin by July 13, according to Deputy DA O’Bryan Kenney. Garcia Torres, a Morgan Hill resident before he was sentenced to prison in 2017, was arraigned on the new charge on June 5 in Santa Clara County Superior Court.
A tentative trial date is set for June 29 in a Santa Clara County courtroom.
LaMar was 15 when she was reported missing from her north Morgan Hill Home in March 2012. She was a sophomore at Sobrato High School.
Garcia Torres was arrested in May 2012 in connection with LaMar’s disappearance. He faced trial at the San Jose Hall of Justice on charges of first degree murder, as well as unrelated accusations that he tried to kidnap three women in local Safeway parking lots in 2009.
The jury convicted Garcia Torres on all charges on May 9, 2017, and sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
LaMar’s remains have not been found. Without a body or murder weapon, the DAs case against Garcia Torres relied heavily on trace DNA evidence found in his vehicle and on Sierra’s belongings. The teen’s backpack, cellphone and clothing were found on the side of the road, close to her neighborhood in the days following her disappearance.
In February, California’s Sixth Appellate District announced it had overturned the 2017 murder conviction. The panel of judges ruled that the conviction relied on “insufficient evidence of willful, deliberate and premeditated murder or a specific intent to kill.”
The California Attorney General’s office responded by authorizing a retrial of Garcia Torres in the county court system.
Kenney said in the upcoming retrial, prosecutors will not be permitted to present the theory that LaMar’s murder was premeditated.
Furthermore, the DAs office will not include any charges or narrative related to the 2009 Safeway cases in the upcoming retrial, Kenney said. Instead, in accordance with the appellate ruling the DAs office will again prosecute Garcia Torres on those charges in a separate trial, after the upcoming murder trial.
Garcia Torres has been transferred from a state prison to the Santa Clara County Jail to await the new trial.
“We intend to retry the case and we are doing everything we can to prepare for that,” Kenney said.
During the 2017 trial, investigators detailed how they determined that Garcia Torres kidnapped LaMar while she was walking to her school bus stop at Palm and Dougherty avenues the morning of March 16, 2012. He killed her hours after abducting her, and disposed of her remains in an unknown location, according to authorities.
Law enforcement officers from throughout the state were joined by hundreds of volunteers as they scoured South County looking for LaMar’s remains. The search continues, as the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office said on Feb. 27 that its investigators have continued to pursue leads in the years since Garcia Torres was convicted.
