Closing arguments end in Alvarez sentencing

LOS ANGELES — Attorneys finished closing arguments in the penalty phase in the case against Juan Manuel Alvarez, the 29-year-old construction worker who faces the prospect of either death or life without the possibility of parole.

The nine-woman, three-man jury found Alvarez guilty on June 26 of 11 counts of murder and one count of arson for causing the 2005 Metrolink train derailment that killed 11 people and injured more than 180 crew and passengers. Officials have called it one of the most destructive incidents in rail history.

Monday morning, prosecutors and defense attorneys presented competing versions of what they view as acceptable punishments for Alvarez.

Deputy Dist. Atty. John Monaghan showed jurors pictures of the 11 crash fatalities, each lying on a morgue table, juxtaposed by images of their smiling faces.

Monaghan told the panel that Alvarez does not deserve leniency or sympathy, and that death would be the appropriate sentence for a man prosecutors believe did not show remorse and plotted to kill as many people as possible.

Prosecutors presented a long line of crash victims and surviving family members during the weeklong penalty phase, at times pushing jurors to the emotional brink with moving testimony from family members living with the realization they will no longer have a mother, father, sister, brother or other relative.

Defense attorneys countered with testimony of their own from emotionally charged witnesses. On Friday, Alvarez’s cousin and mother told jurors of the abuse and neglect that defined much of his childhood in Mexicali, Mexico.

“There is nothing I could say, nothing I could construct that would alleviate the prolonged loss and suffering of each of the families,” defense attorney Michael Belter told jurors on Monday. “But you’re here to make a rational decision and not be swayed by emotion. You’re not here to be vengeful, but to be rational.”

As Belter spoke, Alvarez looked back at his mother, Leticia Alvarez, as she sobbed quietly in the courtroom, comforted by her daughter, Cynthia Alvarez.

Leticia Alvarez told jurors on Friday that, while pregnant with Juan Alvarez, she considered an abortion and felt helpless in the face of constant abuse by her husband, a man Belter characterized as a “monster.”