Jury Rejects Unusual Defense, Convicts Man of 2 Murders

A Norwalk Superior Court jury Monday convicted Derrick Snowden, 37, of murdering two women in April 1992, rejecting his defense that the crimes were committed by his sister, who was then a teenager.

Because of a rare legal loophole, had the jury believed the defense, not only would Derrick Snowden have been acquitted but Monique Snowden, who was 14 at the time of the murders, could not have been tried; neither adult nor juvenile court would have had jurisdiction over her.

In 1992, 14-year-olds could not be prosecuted as adults, so Monique Snowden could not have been tried in adult court. Today, she also is outside the purview of the juvenile justice system, which can hold someone in custody only until age 25. She was 26 when the murder case was filed.

“When all was said and done ... the jury just could not believe Monique Snowden had pulled the trigger in this case,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. John Lewin.

Snowden was found guilty of first-degree murder in the shooting deaths of Mayda Porras, a mother of four, and her housekeeper, Anna Junco, who was engaged to be married. He also was found guilty of the special allegation of using a handgun and the special circumstance that the murders were in retaliation for prior witness testimony.

He was acquitted of committing murder in the course of a burglary.

Snowden’s late father, Bill, was a sheriff’s deputy.

The Snowden and Porras families were neighbors in the gated community of Shadow Park in Cerritos and once were friendly.

But in 1985, Porras testified against Snowden after she saw him and other local youths vandalizing and burglarizing a neighbor’s home. Her testimony helped send him to the California Youth Authority.

Although Snowden always was a suspect in the case, it languished for 14 years for a variety of reasons, among them that Snowden had moved to Las Vegas and investigators had difficulty tracking him down. A break came in the case after the murder weapon was retrieved from his mother’s home.

Snowden’s attorney, Anne Maloney Dawidziak , had argued that Snowden’s sister Monique had put on her dead father’s uniform and killed the women. Relatives testified that they remembered her confessing that she had done so. In court, Monique Snowden denied committing the crimes.

Hers was a no-win situation, Lewin said: “She loves her brother very much and it’s awfully hard to take the stand and realize you might provide testimony that might send him to prison the rest of his life.”

Derrick Snowden will be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.