By Brian Anderson
Contra Costa Newspapers

Feb. 3, 2003

OAKLAND —A jury found three men guilty Monday of killing Deputy John Paul Monego during a Dublin restaurant robbery and agreed that at least one of them should face nothing short of life behind bars for the crime.

But in a split decision that left relatives on either side of the case in stunned suspense, jurors could not conclude whether Miguel Galindo Sifuentes, 23, and Hai Minh Le, 24, should move into a penalty phase. Despite deciding almost immediately to consider whether Reuben Eliceo Vasquez, 27, deserved a death sentence, the nine-woman, three-man panel has been stalled for days as it mulled whether Sifuentes should face a similar hearing.

A lone juror has refused to join her 11 colleagues, who have reached consensus on the special circumstance that prosecutor Jon Goodfellow told jurors should be found true. They had taken seven votes on the charge before the partial verdicts were read in Judge Alfred Delucchi”s jammed courtroom.

It was unclear on which side the majority fell.

Juror five, who looked distraught as she sat with her colleagues, initially shook her head as Delucchi asked whether further deliberations would result in a decision. She later said it might be possible.

The group also was split on a special circumstance filed against Le. After two votes taken Monday, they were divided 6-4 with two members of the panel remaining undecided.

“They’re in the same position as they were in four days ago,” Delucchi said earlier in the day. “I’m getting the impression that because of the duration of this trial we’re getting some cracks in the unity of the jury.”

Still, the reading of even the partial verdicts released some answers. The heads of the accused men hung low to defense tables as they sat quietly with their attorneys. Relatives of the defendants wiped away tears as the courtroom clerk read the verdicts. They have declined to comment throughout trial, saying privately that the deliberations have been punishing. On the other side, early word of the verdict announcement shot through the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office in the hours after Delucchi said he would accept what jurors had after fearing that they were hopelessly deadlocked. Deputies and department brass joined Monego’s parents, wife and other supporters in the wooden chairs of Department 3 to listen to words they had been hoping to hear for more than four years.

Their son, brother, husband and comrade had been gunned down as he responded to the Outback Steakhouse late Dec. 11, 1998. Monego was backing up another deputy who was responding to a 911 hang-up call made from a phone inside the Regional Street restaurant.

He was unaware that Deputy Angela Schwab had been taken hostage and stripped of her gun. And he was unsuspecting as he began walking through the front doors and into what became his last act as a peace officer.

Goodfellow told jurors during trial that Monego was blasted with slugs from a 9mm handgun. His weapon still holstered, his only defense in the surprise attack was a Kevlar vest that did not save him that night.

“I knew they would come to the right decision,” Monego’s sister Mary Ellen Biesecker said of the jury verdict. “It’s like turning a new page.”

But the book has not yet been closed on the Monego trial. Jurors will be back again today — their 11th day of deliberations — to continue to talk through the legal thicket.

“It’s finally some foreclosure,” Biesecker said. “It’s a good thing. But it’s not over yet.”