Jurors began deliberations today in the trial of a 22-year-old man charged in the shooting deaths of two USC graduate students from China during a robbery.
The Los Angeles Superior Court panel heard just under a week of testimony before being handed the case against Javier Bolden, who is charged in the April 11, 2012, killings of Ying Wu and Ming Qu as they sat inside a car that was double-parked on a street near the USC campus.
In his closing argument, Deputy District Attorney Dan Akemon told jurors that “the evidence of guilt in this case is overwhelming.”
The 23-year-old graduate students were “helpless victims” inside a BMW that presented an “attractive target,” the prosecutor said. He said Bolden and a friend, Bryan Barnes, were “essentially ambushing” the couple and “counting down the seconds of the lives of these victims” as they approached the car from behind while communicating on cell phones.
Barnes, also 22, fired two shots inside the locked car. He pleaded guilty Feb. 5 to a pair of first-degree murder counts and admitted that he discharged a firearm and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Qu crawled out of the vehicle and across the street to try to get help after he was shot once in the head. Wu was shot once in the left side of the body and once in her right arm.
Bolden’s attorney, Andrew Goldman, called what had happened a “horrible, horrible incident,” but maintained that his client is not guilty of the charges.
His client was arrested in Victorville, flown into Los Angeles by helicopter, spent about an hour denying any involvement in the killings while being interrogated by police and was “scared out of his mind” when he was told that he could face the death penalty, Goldman said. He said Bolden then gave police details about the shooting that were “completely inconsistent” with testimony and forensic evidence presented during the trial.
“Someone who was there would know exactly what happened,” the defense attorney told jurors.
Bolden is charged with two counts of murder, along with special circumstance allegations of multiple murders and murder during the commission of a robbery.
Bolden is also charged with attempted murder involving a Feb. 12, 2012, shooting about three miles away in which a man who was shot in the head suffered permanent brain damage, along with assault with a semi-automatic firearm on a woman was shot in the leg by a stray bullet.
Bolden could face life in prison without the possibility of parole if convicted of the killings.
The prosecutor said jurors heard Bolden on tape “confessing” to the murders after police presented him with “very compelling” cellular phone records that prove that he and Barnes were in the area at the time of the killing.
Of the phone records, Bolden’s attorney said, “Javier’s phone is in the area, but that doesn’t place him next to the BMW.”
Goldman told jurors that his client was intimidated by a jailhouse informant in a cell and that Bolden “had to make things up” because he was not at the scene of the shooting.
He urged the jury to acquit Bolden of all of the charges against him.
In his rebuttal argument, Akemon countered that Bolden had provided “excruciating details” about the case and was “not making anything up.”
“In the end, what we have here is we have a very compelling case of guilt against Mr. Bolden,” he said. “This is a mountain of evidence.”
