Modesto man gets 75 years to life for fatal shooting in west Modesto

A 40-year-old man was sentenced Thursday to 75 years to life in prison for the shooting death of a woman in west Modesto, according to the Stanislaus County District Attorney’s Office. Attorneys have said in court that the 2009 killing was motivated by racial hatred.

A jury in April 2014 found Joseph Dixon guilty of first-degree murder in the attack on 28-year-old Shannon Case. Gunfire struck the Ceres woman as she sat in a parked vehicle about 1:30 a.m. April 4, 2009, near Pelton Avenue and Hammond Street in the Robertson Road Park area.

In the trial, Deputy District Attorney Brad Nix told the jury that Case was murdered because she introduced the daughter of Dixon’s girlfriend to a black man.

Mark Sullivan, Dixon’s defense attorney, has argued that the racial hatred came from Dixon’s girlfriend, Madeline Lopez. He has said Lopez hated black people and had motive to kill Case.

Initially, Dixon, Lopez and Desiree Mills were charged with murder in Case’s death. Lopez and Mills later accepted plea deals to lesser charges.

Lopez pleaded no contest to shooting at an occupied vehicle and agreed to a sentence of five years in prison. Mills pleaded no contest to being an accessory in Case’s death and received a jail sentence for time already served.

Moments before a preliminary hearing in the case was about to resume in July 2010, Dixon grabbed Mills’ hair, pulled her to the floor and tried to grab her throat, according to Stanislaus County sheriff’s officials.

After the assault in the courtroom, the judge decided the defendants would be prosecuted separately.

The prosecutor told the jury that Case was lured to the park by Mills, Case’s longtime friend. Case was in the driver’s seat of her parked Isuzu Rodeo with two men in the passenger seats as they waited for Mills.

A vehicle pulled up, and shots were fired at the Isuzu. Case was hit by gunfire in her legs, chest and head. She bled to death shortly before police arrived.

The defense attorney told the jury that the “real evidence” shows his client is not guilty, and that the prosecution’s witnesses had no credibility. He said there was no eyewitness who spotted Dixon at the crime scene and that no murder weapon, fingerprints or DNA evidence linked his client to the killing.

Chris Saini was the man Case introduced to Lopez’s daughter at a party. The two later had a sexual encounter, according to the defense attorney. Saini and another man were in the parked Isuzu with Case when she was shot.

On Friday, Dixon, of Modesto, was serving his sentence in San Quentin State Prison.

This story was originally published August 8, 2015 at 4:28 PM with the headline "Modesto man gets 75 years to life for fatal shooting in west Modesto."