Orange County's Peter Albert Baltazar isn't the brightest bulb on the block, but he's got plenty of time to ponder his own stupidity.
Inside an Anaheim garage on the day he committed his 2009 act of violence, Baltazar drank booze, smoked marijuana and consumed methamphetamine with a group of men, including his eventual victim, 24-year-old, drug dealer James Arrecis.
Several hours before Baltazar fired a 12-gauge shotgun blast at close range into Arrecis' head on a Brea street, he sent his victim a telephonic text message calling him a “dumbass.”
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But the killer wasn't done helping to guarantee his conviction.
He also bragged to at least three people that he was the killer and his father ultimately provided the motive: his son committed the murder because he'd felt “disrespected.”
A 2012 jury agreed with prosecutors inside the Orange County District Attorney's Office and found Baltazar guilty.
But he appealed, claiming witnesses gave jurors perjured testimony.
This week, a California Court of Appeal based in Santa Ana considered the killer's complaint and rejected it by blaming any conflicting statements on the fact that Baltazar–who'd attempted to create an alibi but failed–had frightened witnesses to back off earlier accounts given to police.
Upshot: The 38-year-old genius will continue to serve his 50 years to life sentence inside a high-security cell at High Desert State Prison in Susanville.
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CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.