Killer’s Life-Without-Parole Sentence Is Overturned : Ruling: Appeal court says judge didn’t properly instruct jury. Murder conviction is upheld. Defendant was one of 5 gang members involved in Westminster carjack slaying.

A state appeals court has overturned the sentencing of a Santa Ana gang member who in 1993 became the youngest person in Orange County to receive life in prison without possibility of parole.

In a ruling issued this week, the Fourth District Court of Appeal upheld the first-degree murder conviction against Edel Gonzalez for the August, 1991, shooting death of Janet L. Bicknell during an attempted carjacking at Bowling Green Park in Westminster.

But the court found that the Orange County Superior Court trial judge failed to give jurors proper instructions about the special circumstance allegation that Gonzalez acted with “reckless indifference to human life.” The Orange County jury convicted Gonzalez, 18 at the time, of the special circumstance that qualified him for life behind bars without possibility of parole, the harshest sentence short of the death penalty.

Gonzalez had argued in the appeal that Judge Luis J. Cardenas failed to define the term “reckless indifference to human life” for the jury when it asked for a definition during its deliberations. The judge had informed the jury that there was “no other approved language in the law to further define this concept.”

The appellate court gave the District Attorney’s Office the option of retrying Gonzalez on the special circumstance allegation.

“We are going to have to review the decision to determine if we are going to retry the defendant on that aspect of the case,” Chief Assistant Dist. Atty. Maury Evans said Thursday.

The appeals court ordered a resentencing in the case if there is no retrial on the special allegations.

A first-degree murder conviction alone mandates 25 years to life in prison.

Authorities said at the time that Bicknell, 49, of Westminster, was shot because she wouldn’t allow Gonzalez and four other gang members, including the defendant’s older brother, to hijack her car to use in a drive-by shooting against a rival gang that had invaded their turf with graffiti.

Gonzalez was not the triggerman in the shooting, but a law passed by the Legislature in June, 1990, allowed a murder prosecution if a death occurs during the commission of certain felonies.

Police found the teacher’s aide dead in her car, groceries scattered inside and the radio still playing. Not far away, police arrested the five youths after they had pulled over at a convenience store to cover the rival gang’s graffiti with their own slogans.

The killing shocked county residents and sparked the formation of a multi-agency gang suppression unit.