Sotelo-Urena

In April 2016, George Lowery, a 50-year-old homeless man, was beaten to death in San Diego County. Two brothers were charged with his kidnapping, torture, and murder. That same month, the homeless 51-year-old John Gerald Holiday was murdered near a dumpster in downtown Fresno.

The next month saw the murders of two more homeless individuals. Sixty-six-year-old Stephen Williams was found dead in a pond in Golden Gate Park. It was reported that two men, along with other assailants, had tortured Williams over a three-day period, eventually killing him and dumping his body in the pond. And 37-year-old Joshua William Clark died in Santa Rosa following a one-sided fight with another man over either cigarettes or a debt owed for marijuana. Both men were homeless and downtown Santa Rosa regulars.

In July 2016, the police arrested a man suspected of committing a series of attacks in San Diego that left three homeless men dead and at least two others seriously injured.

These tragedies in those few months are not anomalies—studies show that homeless individuals are the victims of crime at a significantly higher rate than housed individuals.

Here, on trial for the first degree…