By Brian Anderson
Contra Costa Newspapers

Dec. 12, 2002

OAKLAND —Lawyers defending three men facing a possible death sentence if convicted of killing a deputy sheriff during a Dublin robbery wrapped up their cases on Wednesday, setting the stage for closing arguments to begin early next year.

Judge Alfred Delucchi sent jurors home for the holidays Wednesday after nearly three months of witness testimony in the trial of Reuben Eliceo Vasquez, 27, Miguel Galindo Sifuentes, 23, and Hai Minh Le, 23.

Each man is charged with first-degree murder with special circumstances stemming from the Dec. 11, 1998 Outback Steakhouse robbery. Lawyers for Sifuentes and Le had asked Delucchi on Wednesday to acquit the men, arguing that there was not enough evidence to sustain a conviction or to support the special circumstances.

Their clients were not "major participants" in the crimes, the attorneys said, and should not face the same punishment as Vasquez, who prosecutor Jon Goodfellow has maintained killed Deputy John Paul Monego, 33.

"The evidence presented at the trial demonstrates that (Sifuentes) was at most an accomplice to a planned robbery at Outback," Pleasanton attorney Harry Traback wrote in a motion filed this week. "It does not show that he personally participated in or was even near when officer Monego was killed."

Specifically, Traback said, Sifuentes did not arrive at the restaurant with "an arsenal of weapons" and was not even present during the entire sequence of events.

But Goodfellow held that both men clearly took an active role in the heist and struck a great deal of fear into the roughly two dozen employees and customers there that night.

"The gratuitous violence displayed by Le and Vasquez certainly put Sifuentes on notice that worse was likely to follow," Goodfellow wrote in court papers. "It is easy to assume that Vasquez was at the doors for a reason -- to shoot any other police officer arriving at the scene."

Delucchi agreed.

"I think a major point here is that all three of the defendants were in the restaurant when the first shot was fired," Delucchi said in denying the motion.

A gag order has barred attorneys from talking publicly about the case, and family members on both sides of the trial declined to comment Wednesday.

Monego was shot and killed as he checked out a 911 call made from the Regional Street restaurant. A woman had phoned authorities after three men stormed the restaurant, but she hung up before a dispatcher could determine why she had called.

An Outback owner testified he had a gun to his head when he later told the dispatcher during a return call that everything was fine.

The men took Deputy Angela Schwab hostage a short time later when she went into the restaurant believing that the call was a false alarm, she said during the 11-week trial. She was stripped of her gun and being led to the back when Monego was gunned down at the restaurant's front doors.

Closing arguments are scheduled to begin Jan. 6.