Pulido

facts—as presented by the California Supreme Court in its opinion affirming Pulido’s conviction—in some detail:

Sometime between 1 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. on May 24, 1992, Ramon Flores, the cashier at a Shell gas station in San Mateo, was shot in the head with a sin- gle .45-caliber bullet, killing him within seconds. A neighbor heard a loud bang coming from the direc- tion of the gas station around 3:45 a.m., then a voice yelling; he could not distinguish words, but told a police detective it sounded like the person was addressing someone else. A cash register taken from the store was found the next morning in some road- side bushes elsewhere in San Mateo. Defendant’s fingerprints were on the cash register, as well as on an unopened can of Coke found on the store counter. No fingerprints of Michael Aragon, who defendant testified committed the killing, were identified on either the can or the register.

Arrested on an unrelated auto theft charge, defen- dant volunteered that he had information about the 6510 PULIDO v. CHRONES Shell station robbery. He led police to a location where they found discarded, unused .45-caliber car- tridges, which bore ejection markings…