After five weeks of often contentious testimony, a jury will soon decide whether a Mongols Motorcycle Club member committed murder when he shot a SWAT team member who burst into his San Gabriel home at 4 a.m. on Oct 28, 2014, or acted in self-defense because he didn't know the "intruders" were police.
David Martinez, 41, is charged with murder and assault on a police officer with a firearm in the shooting that killed Pomona Police SWAT team member Shaun Diamond, 45, nearly five years ago and injured Martinez's father, Arturo.
Closing arguments begin Thursday at 9 a.m. in the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center downtown, after which the jury of six women and six men will begin deliberations.
The prosecution, led by Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Attys. Michael Blake and Jacques Garden, maintains that Martinez was a full-fledged, a.k.a. "full-patch" Mongol who knew officers were at his door when he fired his shotgun and then lied to cover up what he had done.
"He saw an opportunity and he took a shot," prosecutor Blake said during his opening statement on May 6, the Daily Bulletin reported.
But the defense, led by Public Defender Blake Sullivan, called the shooting "a perfect storm" of events that led to Diamond's death — "tragic, sad, unfortunate, but accidental."
Martinez, a clean-shaven man who worked as a termite inspector before his arrest, has a large Mongols tattoo on his chest, he acknowledged at trial, but it wasn't visible under the conservative button-down shirts and dark ties he wore in court.
He was visibly nervous when he took the stand on June 4. "I've never testified in court before," he said, "never." And his voice broke as he began his description of the shooting, listing the family who lived in the small home, he, his common-law wife and their baby in the back of the house, their 10-year-old son in the other adjacent bedroom, and his parents sleeping in the front room with his sister, who has Down syndrome, because that's the place she always wanted to sleep.
Martinez, who testified for two days, said he woke at 4 a.m. to hear a loud banging coming from the front of his house, where his parents and sister slept.
He never heard any voices identifying themselves as police, he said. With their four dogs barking and "that intense banging, banging," he said he grabbed a shotgun from under his bed and ran to the front room where he saw his father opening the front door and the front tip of what appeared to be a gun pointing inside.
Martinez said he called to his parents not to open the door. He had argued with a Mongols member the night before, had unpaid dues to the organization and feared they were coming to hurt him.
"I never heard anybody identify themselves as police," he said. "I remember telling my dad twice, 'Wait, wait,' but I don't think he heard me.... I saw the screen door open up and I just remember seeing a barrel, a black barrel, and I fired the shotgun."
After that, he said he heard screaming, from the porch and his father, screaming, 'Police.' He said he saw his father had been shot in the arm and police entering the house, so he threw down his gun and laid down on the floor, shouting, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I didn't know you were the police. I thought you were the Mongols."
He said he didn't know until later, when he was handcuffed and sitting outside, that anyone other than his father had been shot.
Later under cross-examination, prosecutor Blake asked Martinez, "You shot to kill that day?"
"I shot to protect my family," Martinez replied.
Martinez's parents believed the police had fired the shots that killed Diamond and grazed Martinez's father, a conviction they still hold today. But investigators say the only shot fired that morning came from Martinez's gun.
Diamond was shot in the back of the neck. Investigators believe he had turned away from the door to let his fellow officers move inside when he was struck.
Despite the chaos and Diamond's grave injury, none of the officers fired their weapons, the prosecutors said. They remained professional, they said, and did their jobs.
Martinez's parents weren't allowed in the courtroom until after he testified, but his adult brother and sisters were always in the gallery, staying after court each day to pick up his laundry and make sure he had fresh clothes for the following day.
Diamond's friends and family appeared daily as well, and at least a dozen of his law enforcement colleagues filled the courtroom the day Martinez took the stand.
Diamond's daughter, Margo, said after the trial one day that her father, known for his sense of humor, was also an efficient and meticulous person.
"He always had a plan," Margo Diamond said. "He always had a way out." Her father loved his SWAT duties, she said, but she never worried about that. She worried more about him riding his motorcycle to work than she did about him getting hurt on the job.
About 14 officers were at the house serving a search warrant that morning, as part of a multi-agency operation targeting members of the Mongols Motorcycle Club. Pomona police weren't part of the task force investigating the Mongols, but helped serve one of the seven warrants that morning.
Pomona Police Sgt. Richard Aguiar became emotional during his testimony on May 6, the Daily Bulletin reported, as he described how he and Diamond, his best friend, were given the job of breaching the door. He said he had to continue on with his duties, even after he saw his friend fall.
Martinez got involved with the Mongols in 2011, Sullivan said, but after a couple of years became disenchanted with the group because membership took too much time away from his family and the dues became too expensive for him to pay. Then in the spring of 2013 he was injured in a motorcycle accident. He and his family moved in with his parents during his recovery and he said he never rode a motorcycle again.
He didn't leave the club because he was worried about retaliation, Martinez testified, but the prosecutors brought in an expert witness, Darrin Kozlowski, who became a full-patch Mongol while working undercover for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
Kozlowski, wearing a suit, glasses and a neatly trimmed goatee, testified that in his experience, all a Mongols member had to do to leave the club was make sure he had paid up all his dues.
The case took a long time to get to trial, Martinez said during testimony, in part because his parents insisted he drop Sullivan, his public defender, and get another attorney who would put forward their belief that it was the police who had fired the fatal shot that day.
His parents paid the attorney in advance, he said, and he stayed with him out of respect for what they had paid. But he and his parents had many arguments about what happened, he said, and he ultimately came back to Sullivan.
Initially, Martinez said, he wanted to believe his parents' version of events. "I couldn't accept at the time that I shot him [Diamond]," he said, his voice breaking. "That was the part we argued about, but I came to accept that my actions, of wanting to protect my family on Oct. 28, 2014, at 4 a.m., shot Shaun Diamond. I've come to accept that I did shoot him."
Photo: Officer Shaun Diamond in a 2000 photo with his daughter, Margo. Credit: Family photo