People v. Varela CA4/3

STATEMENT OF FACTS

In the early morning of September 10, 2017, 68-year-old Dzung Nguyen was fatally attacked while walking in her neighborhood in search of recyclable cans and bottles. The central issue at Varela’s trial was the identity of Nguyen’s attacker. The jury had to decide whether Varela was the person who attacked Nguyen, as the prosecution alleged, or Varela was wrongly accused simply because he tried to assist Nguyen after someone else had attacked her, as the defense claimed. At the time of the incident, Varela was 30 years old and living with his father, Carlos, in a house near Beach Boulevard and the 22 Freeway. Despite struggling with alcohol addiction in his early 20s, Varela had been sober for several years. He was also working and taking college classes in an attempt to turn his life around. In the days leading up to Nguyen’s murder, however, Carlos sensed Varela was feeling a bit down about something. And

1 By separate order filed contemporaneously with this opinion, we deny Varela’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus, which alleges his trial attorney was ineffective for not making sufficient objections in the trial court to preserve some of the issues he…