DENVER—A man shown on a videotape smearing an organ from his dead cellmate’s body on his prison cell door window was trying to survive and the image is not an indication of guilt, a defense attorney argued during the closing statements of his client’s murder trial Tuesday.
Rudy Cabrera Sablan, charged with first-degree murder in the October 1999 death of his cellmate, Joey Estrella, at the federal penitentiary in Florence, could face the death penalty if convicted.
Both prosecutors and defense attorneys presented their closing arguments and jurors were to begin deliberations Wednesday.
Prosecutors argued the videotape shows a smiling Rudy Sablan participating in the slaying by helping his cousin and co-defendant, William Sablan, make up a story and hide a disposable razor that was used to slit Estrella’s throat and disembowel him.
William Sablan was convicted last year of first-degree murder in the killing and sentenced to life in prison without parole. The jury decided against the death penalty.
Defense attorneys argued that Rudy Sablan simply tried to appear boastful to protect himself from his cousin who had just killed Estrella after all three got drunk on homemade wine and an argument started. The three men were sharing the same cell.
Defense attorney Donald Knight described how William Sablan began throwing blood after trying to yank Estrella’s intestines from his body but couldn’t because they were still attached.
“You got a crazy man inside your cell. What are you going to do?,” Knight asked the jurors. “Is picking up an organ such a bad thing to do to make sure you make it out alive?”
During closing statements, Knight said the videotape shows the situation after the slaying but leaves unanswered what happened before and during the killing. Knight argued prosecutors relied heavily on unreliable witnesses, including a man convicted of raping a 15-year-old girl after being diagnosed with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
“In a crime conceived in hell you do not have angels as witnesses,” prosecutor Brenda Taylor told jurors, while telling them to rely on the videotape. “He’s totally betrayed by that piece of evidence that the defense doesn’t want you to dwell on.”
A videotape shot by prison guards after they saw the carnage inside the cell showed William Sablan holding up Estrella’s internal organs and making obscene gestures. Blood flowed under the door of the cell, and an “S,” Sablan’s second initial, was written in blood on the cell wall.
Rudy Sablan and William Sablan, who are from Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands, were heard on the tape speaking in English and Chamorro, their native language.
At one point, Rudy Sablan tells William Sablan to block the guards’ view so he could flush the razor down the toilet.
Prosecutors said Estrella was first choked into unconsciousness with headphone cords.
Knight argued that Rudy Sablan was trying to keep the peace between the two men, pointing to testimony that showed he had broken up two fights shortly before the fatal attack. Taylor argued that the fact the two men stopped fighting twice on Rudy Sablan’s orders showed he had control.
Estrella and Rudy Sablan had been cellmates for more than three months inside a 7-by-14-foot cell until William Sablan was placed in the cell with both men three days before the slaying. Defense attorneys had a replica built by a theatrical set designer, at a cost of $15,000, brought into the courtroom to call attention to the conditions at the prison.
The cell was intended for a single man.
