Utah man found guilty in CJ Smoke Shop murder trial

A jury on Tuesday found a former university student guilty of aggravated murder in the 2012 fatal shooting of a west Salt Lake City smoke shop clerk.

The jury of four men and four women returned the verdict after about nine hours of deliberation in the six-day trial, which saw 28-year-old Yelfris Sosa-Hurtado testify on his own behalf in 3rd District Court.

Jurors found Sosa-Hurtado guilty on all charges — one count of first-degree felony aggravated murder and nine counts of third-degree felony discharge of a weapon — in connection with the March 14, 2012, shooting death of 26-year-old Stephen Guadalupe Chavez.

Sosa-Hurtado now faces a possible prison term of 25 years to life, or life without the possibility of parole.

Sentencing is set for Dec. 15 before Judge Denise Lindberg.

Sosa-Hurtado showed no emotion as he stood listening to the jury foreman read the verdict aloud. In the courtroom gallery behind him, tears began to flow with the findings — Sosa-Hurtado's young wife began to sob, covering her face with her hands, while the Chavez family, who had held each other's hands through the reading, began to shed tears of relief.

"Finally, justice was served," Chavez's cousin, Christina Jacuinde, said outside the courtroom. "It still doesn't bring him back. Now we can go forward and start to put this behind us."

Defense attorneys said they plan an appeal.

"They should have found him not guilty," attorney Ralph Dellapiana said. "Anybody who deliberates eight hours has to have reasonable doubt about whether someone is guilty. An appeal is warranted."

Salt Lake County prosecutors contended that Sosa-Hurtado shot Chavez in cold blood with a rifle because he had been bested in a fistfight by the clerk in an alley behind the store and he needed to settle the score.

Attorneys for Sosa-Hurtado argued that the case was one of mistaken identity.

On Monday, Sosa-Hurtado, a former University of Utah student, took the witness stand and emphatically denied any involvement in the shooting.

"No," a calm Sosa-Hurtado said assuredly, when asked by defense attorney Patrick Corum if he had ever been inside CJ's Smoke Shop, 876 W. 800 South.

Over and over again to questions about events on the day of the murder, his answer was the same: No, he had never met the victim. No, he had not been in a fistfight with Chavez earlier that day. And no, he did not go to the smoke shop with a rifle and open fire.

Instead, Sosa-Hurtado told the jury, he was at a friend's home in Kearns at the time police say the shooting took place — shortly after 8 p.m. The former U. computer science student said he then went home and was in bed watching TV with his wife, a Salt Lake Community College student who was studying for midterm exams.

In closing arguments, Salt Lake County prosecutors argued that the facts of the "cold-blooded murder" were clear.

"His intention was to shoot and his intention was to kill," Deputy Salt Lake County District Attorney Vincent Meister told jurors. "He said it as he walked into the store, 'I am going to kill you.' "

Prosecutors say the first bullet fired shattered a display case and sent shards of glass into the leg of shopowner Isabel Chavez, the victim's father.

The second was aimed at Stephen Chavez, who dived behind a counter to the floor. Prosecutors say Sosa-Hurtado leaned over the case and fired two more shots into Chavez's back.

While fleeing, the gunman fired an additional 10 shots. A bullet casing later found by police in the garbage at Sosa-Hurtado's home matched those found at the store, prosecutors said.

Defense attorneys contended there was no physical evidence connecting Sosa-Hurtado to the shooting.

Instead, they argued, prosecutors hung their case on a string of witnesses, including Chavez's father, who provided inconsistent descriptions of the alleged shooter, and unreliable police work, including, a failure to obtain any DNA or fingerprint evidence from the shell casings of assault rifle bullets found at the scene and in Sosa-Hurtado's garbage can.

"What are we doing here, except Vladimir came forward?" defense attorney Ralph Dellapiana asked.

Vladimir Suarez-Campos, 40, is the man whom police initially believed had served as Sosa-Hurtado's getaway driver.

In testimony last week, Suarez-Campos said he had gone to the store with Sosa-Hurtado because he believed his friend had been beaten up by three men and wanted to help him defend his honor. Suarez-Campos said he was expecting a fistfight, but testified that he watched Sosa-Hurtado walk into the shop with a rifle and begin shooting.

"He never told me that he had a weapon and he never said anything about shooting," said Suarez-Campos, who testified to leaving the scene on foot.

Defense attorneys had dismissed Suarez-Campos's testimony as unreliable. He faces his own, separate murder charge in connection with the shooting, but has cut a deal with prosecutors that allows him to exchange his testimony for a guilty plea to a lesser charge of manslaughter and a sentence that includes no prison time.

jdobner@sltrib.com

Twitter: @jenniferdobner