Judge schedules second trial in Patterson man’s slaying

A judge on Wednesday scheduled a second trial to start Aug. 18 for a defendant charged with murder in the 2011 shooting of a Patterson man in west Modesto.

The first trial for Juan Manuel Tello, 29, ended June 19, when the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict, forcing a mistrial.

Tello is accused of murder in the shooting death of Robert Ruvalcaba. The 38-year-old man was found dead in a west Modesto alley.

Stanislaus Superior Court Judge Ricardo Córdova on Wednesday said the attorneys were still trying to resolve the case before a second trial.

Tello declined to waive his right to a speedy trial, so the judge had to schedule the second trial within two months of Tello’s previous court appearance. Córdova also scheduled the defendant to return to court July 15for a pretrial hearing.

The second trial, like the first, is estimated to last about six weeks. Tello was arrested about a month after the shooting and has remained in custody at the Stanislaus County jail.

Ruvalcaba’s body was found Dec. 16, 2011, in the alley near North Martin Luther King Drive and Linden Street.

In his closing arguments last month, Deputy District Attorney Wendell Emerson said the motive behind the killing was an owed debt, and that Tello was the only one with a motive in this case. “All the evidence points to one person,” the prosecutor told the jury.

Frank Carson, Tello’s attorney, argued that Tello never owed money and didn’t commit this crime. He said the prosecution’s case is filled with circumstantial evidence and doesn’t show who killed Ruvalcaba.

“What you’ve got here, ladies and gentlemen, is a mountain of reasonable doubt,” Carson told the jury last month.

The defense attorney said the injuries Ruvalcaba suffered in his death don’t fit the prosecution’s theory. Ruvalcaba’s face was kicked, and some of his teeth were dislodged.

A forensic pathologist testified that the disfigurement found on the body was the worst the pathologist had ever seen, Carson said in his closing arguments. He argued that those responsible for the killing took their time, risking capture in that alley.

The prosecutor asked the jury to look at the totality of the evidence, which he said points to Tello as the perpetrator. Emerson said the facts show this was a planned killing, and that Tello’s actions afterward show his culpability. Testimony indicated that Tello was crying after police showed up at his mother’s home to question him.

Two witnesses for the prosecution, brothers Diego and Dorian Malagon, implicated Tello in Ruvalcaba’s slaying. Carson argued that the Malagon brothers were led to their answers by investigators. He said the investigators created the evidence against Tello.

Emerson said the detectives did not feed the answers to the Malagons. “It’s up to you to decide what the facts are and what the evidence shows,” he told the jury.

The defense attorney suggested the Malagons, who testified in the trial, were more capable of such a killing; they bragged about guns, used gang slurs and wore bulletproof vests and gang hairstyles. Carson told the jury, “Ladies and gentlemen, that should be chilling to you. Because you sat within inches of them.”

This story was originally published July 8, 2015 at 12:40 PM with the headline "Judge schedules second trial in Patterson man’s slaying."