“If you are a cold-blooded, premeditated murderer and want to give yourself some time to flee to Mexico, how about not being so lazy,” Davis told the jury during his closing arguments.
Davis was responding to charges from Senior Deputy Dist. Atty. Matt Murphy, who told the jury during his closing arguments that Garcia dragged Godsoe’s body away from help to give himself time for escape.
Garcia was interviewed by police two days after Godsoe was found in the early hours of Sept. 21, 2001. Within 48 hours of that interview, witnesses said, he was back in his native Mexico.
Attorneys got into their closing arguments in Garcia’s murder trial Thursday and are expected to conclude Monday. Garcia is accused of killing Godsoe, a girl he had met only hours earlier in the park, with a vicious barrage of kicks and punches to her head and neck while she was on the ground.
Garcia was with friends and family in the late hours of Sept. 20, 2001, celebrating the birth of his daughter earlier that day. Godsoe was at Fairview Park with another friend, and the two groups met each other for the first time and hung out. Garcia, who, at 17, was only a year older than Godsoe at the time, was seen walking off with her that night. Hours later, Godsoe’s friend found her dead body beaten and bloodied in another area of the park with Garcia and his friends nowhere in sight.
Prosecutors argue that Godsoe was beaten so severely through repeated punches and kicks to the head that it caused her airway to swell and hinder her breathing. Add a mix of blood and other bodily fluids into her throat, and she asphyxiated, a coroner testified for the prosecution. Essentially, she was beaten to death.
Davis conceded some of those points Thursday, but with one caveat: She died from complications of a broken jaw.
