"He was a kid," Bean said. "He was a kid who didn't deserve to die."
Juan Beltran, who was 15 at the time, was also seriously injured in the shooting.
Bean pored over trial evidence that he said proved the two men were Echo Park gang members bent on gaining respect through a deliberate drive-by shooting.
"That's currency," he said. "That's how a gang gets respect."
The issue of respect and status has been central to Bean's contention that Martinez was eager to find Beltran and Carlos Pinon for retribution after they told him to leave the area following a confrontation.
"We know he was affected by the disrespect and we know why he came back," Bean said of Martinez.
Martinez also knew Palma had a gun, Bean said, and had murder in mind when he made the "cold, calculated decision" to slowly drive up to the house party he knew Carlos Pinon and Beltran would be at.
Martinez's attorney, Guy O'Brien, rebuffed those accusations and repeated the drumbeat of his defense for the last time — that his client had never been part of a gang.
O'Brien ridiculed the mound of "soft evidence" detectives had assembled that supposedly proved Martinez was an Echo Park gang member — such as "Ecko" brand clothes found in his room or journal writings that contained known gang monikers, among others.
"It's the silliest thing you're ever likely to hear in a case where someone's trying to prove you're a gang member," he told jurors.
He said the gang-related writings were by a teenage boy fantasizing about being cool and "inherently inconclusive."
