People v. Valerio & Kelly CA4/3

INTRODUCTION

Early one morning in 2006, gunfire erupted in the parking lot of a Denny’s restaurant in Anaheim. When the shooting stopped, Armand Jones, a promising young actor, was dead, and Ronnell Spencer, one of Jones’s friends and a clothing store owner, was wounded. The shooting followed an armed robbery in the men’s restroom of the Denny’s. Yolanda Brown, Stanley Simon, Charles Reynolds, Jarrell Kelly and Nicholas Diogenes Valerio, associates or members of the Rollin 20’s criminal street gang, were prosecuted for robbery, murder, attempted murder, and street terrorism. Valerio and Kelly (defendants) were convicted by a jury of first degree murder, premeditated attempted murder, two counts of robbery and active participation in a criminal street gang.1 The jury found additional allegations of felony-murder and gang- related murder special circumstances, being active participants in a criminal street gang, vicariously discharging firearms and causing great bodily injury and death, and committing all crimes for the benefit of, at the direction of, or in association with the Rollin 20’s criminal street gang. The trial court sentenced both defendants to life without the…