Lawyer: Didn’t need to kill him

Knowing that convicting someone of murder weighs heavily on the minds of jurors, Senior Deputy Dist. Atty. Matt Murphy hammered home the idea of accountability, when he gave his closing arguments Monday in the murder trial of Weston Scott Kruger.

“If you decide to use force to take something from someone else, they better not get hurt because we as a society are going to hold you responsible,” Murphy told the jury at the Central Justice Center in Santa Ana. “If you kill them while taking their stuff, regardless if its worth 2 cents or $2 million, regardless of intent we’re going to hold you responsible for that death.”

Kruger, 31, a Newport Harbor High School graduate, is charged with murder after he shoved Newport Beach liquor store owner Hao “Tony” Huynh in 2007. Witnesses testified that Kruger pushed Huynh so hard, that he was lifted three or four feet off the ground and landed with a violent crash onto the back of his head, leaving a 4- or 5-inch crack.

Huynh had confronted Kruger about a trying to steal a pornographic magazine from Huynh’s Sportsman Liquor Store while he was buying cigarettes and chased him outside.

By all accounts, Huynh’s death a day later from his injuries was accidental. No one, including Murphy, is disputing that Kruger did not mean to kill him. In fact, Murphy withdrew the special circumstances enhancement tacked onto Kruger’s murder charge Monday, meaning Kruger faces a 25 years to life sentence instead of life without parole.

So why the first degree murder charge?

“That’s one of the things that was so sad about this. This was totally unnecessary,” Murphy said to the jury. “All [Kruger] needed to do was leave. But instead, he killed Mr. Huynh.”

Murphy argued Monday that Kruger shoved Huynh to make sure he got away with the magazine. That makes it robbery, and with a robbery, that makes it a murder, he said.

Alternate Public Defender Jeremy Dolnick continued to argue that Kruger returned the magazine before pushing Huynh. He told the jury that Kruger threw it back at Huynh outside the liquor store, then pushed him, then picked it up back. If the events happened in that fashion, Dolnick said, Kruger is guilty of possibly theft and involuntary manslaughter, but nothing more. The jury will begin deliberating today.