State Supreme Court Won't Hear Case Against Mother Convicted in Teen's Killing

The California Supreme Court refused today to hear the case against a woman convicted of murder for driving her teenage son and a group of his friends to and from a Long Beach park, where a 13-year-old boy was stabbed to death.

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The state’s highest court denied the defense’s petition seeking review of the case against Eva Daley, who was convicted of second-degree murder for the June 25, 2007, killing of Jose Cano.

Daley is serving a 15-year-to-life term in state prison.

The single mother of three was initially found guilty in October 2008, but a state appellate court panel reversed her conviction after finding in August 2010 that jurors were given an “impermissibly ambiguous” jury instruction.

The second jury to hear the case against Daley deadlocked in December 2012.

In her third trial, jurors deliberated less than a day before convicting Daley of murder.

In an Aug. 14 ruling, a three-justice panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal rejected the defense’s contention that there was insufficient evidence to support Daley’s conviction.

“Daley reasons that, even though she may have exercised poor judgment in driving a group of teenage boys to a fistfight, it was not reasonably foreseeable that the fight would end in a homicide. We disagree,” the panel found in its 25-page ruling.

The appellate court panel noted that Daley was in her white Chevrolet Tahoe while driving at least seven gang members into rival gang territory as they discussed their plans to “rumble” with the rival gang following a confrontation earlier that day outside the Long Beach apartment complex where Daley and her children lived.

“Based on the totality of the record, there was substantial evidence that a reasonable person in Daley’s position either would have or should have known that the fatal stabbing of Cano was a foreseeable consequence of the planned assault by a group of rival gang members,” the panel found.

Daley’s co-defendant, Heriberto Garcia, who was 15 at the time of the crime, was also convicted during the first trial. He has unsuccessfully challenged his second-degree murder conviction and is serving a 15-year-to-life prison sentence.

Six other youths, including Daley’s son, admitted a manslaughter charge in juvenile court and were sent to the California Youth Authority, where they can be held until they turn 25.

During her first trial, Daley testified that she was intending to take the children home safe and didn’t know what the youths were doing when they jumped out of her SUV. She denied knowing that there was going to be a fight or that she had been out to get revenge for her son’s stabbing six months earlier.

She told jurors in her first trial that she did not learn about the killing until the next day, when she heard about it while attending a parenting class in which she had voluntarily enrolled.

Daley also testified in both of her retrials and denied that she had seen any of the youths with weapons.

--City News Service

PHOTO Patch file photo.

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