Juan Corona - Trial

Trial

It took over a year after the murders were discovered for the case against Corona to come to trial. The California Supreme Court voided the death penalty in the state on February 18, 1972, ruling it unconstitutional, cruel and unusual. Therefore, it would not be a capital case. Hawk succeeded in getting a change of venue from Sutter County, to Solano County.

The trial began on September 11, 1972, at the courthouse in Fairfield, California, more than an hour from Yuba City. Jury selection took several weeks, and the trial itself another three months.

Though Corona denied culpability, he was not called to the stand to testify in his own defense and no defense witnesses were called. The jury deliberated for 45 hours and returned a verdict, on January 18, 1973, finding Corona guilty of first degree murder on all 25 counts charged. The judge, Richard Patton, sentenced Corona to 25 terms of life imprisonment, to run consecutively, without the possibility of parole. Despite being sentenced to so many consecutive terms, the Department of Corrections said that Corona would be eligible for parole in seven years, citing section 669 of the penal code, which mandates that when a crime is punished by life imprisonment, with or without the possibility of parole, then all other convictions shall be merged and run concurrently.

Corona was first incarcerated at Vacaville's California Medical Facility, nine miles (14 km) from Fairfield, because of the heart irregularities he had experienced. On December 6, 1973, he was stabbed 32 times in his cell because he had bumped into a fellow inmate in a corridor and failed to say, "excuse me." His left eye was removed in surgery. Of the five men questioned, including the one involved in the bumping incident, one identified as the man's sexual partner and three inmates identified as friends of the partner, four were charged with assault with a deadly weapon.

Juan Corona was transferred to the Correctional Training Facility (CTF), Soledad, California. In early January 1974, Corona's wife, Gloria, filed for divorce in Fairfield, citing irreconcilable differences. It was granted on July 30.