Finger pointing and denying responsibility continued to be the trends in the Gwen Araujo murder retrial this week, as the final defendant, Michael Magidson, took the stand at the Hayward Hall of Justice to testify in his own defense.
Magidson – along with co-defendants Jose Merel and Jason Cazares, all 25 – faces first-degree murder charges for the killing of Araujo, 17, a transgender female who lived in the East Bay city of Newark. The first trial last year ended with a hung jury.
The group of friends met Araujo in August 2002, and at least two of the men – Merel and Magidson – engaged in sexual relations with her. Questions about Araujo's gender surfaced shortly after the men compared their sexual encounters, according to witnesses, and on October 4, 2002, the men confronted Araujo at the Merel home, pulling her pants down to reveal male genitalia. That revelation induced in the defendants a "gay panic" type of reaction, with the men reportedly going into crisis over their sexuality and violently attacking Araujo until she was dead.
Throughout the retrial it has been Magidson who has been implicated in delivering the fatal wounds to Araujo; witnesses have identified him as the person who placed the rope around Araujo's neck and who was with her in the garage, where she was last seen alive. A medical examiner has stated that the cause of Araujo's death was asphyxiation with blunt force trauma to the head, and that while her head injury may have eventually killed her, her strangulation definitively killed her.
But on Tuesday, August 16, Magidson testified that he did not strangle Araujo, and that instead, the prosecution's key witness, Jaron Nabors, admitted to him that he was the one who ended her life.
It was not the first time that the defense tried to blame the fatal injuries on Nabors, who was with the men at the time of the attack but accepted a plea-bargain of voluntary manslaughter with an 11-year prison sentence in exchange for testimony against his former friends.
Last month, Merel's attorney William DuBois suggested that Nabors lied when he said Merel struck Araujo in the head with a can of food, and that Araujo's major head injuries actually came from blows delivered by Nabors. But Merel also supported Nabors's testimony that Magidson admitted to strangling Araujo.
Much of Tuesday's testimony included Magidson's original interview after he was arrested, a videotape that showed Newark police indirectly coaching him on homophobic tactics that could lessen his culpability. After several minutes of Magidson refusing to answer police questions – "You're accusing me of something that could ruin the rest of my life," he said with his head in his hands – a police investigator told him that he sympathized with his reaction to discovering Araujo's biological sex.
"The outrage and embarrassment you must have felt ... I can only imagine," the investigating officer said, who went on to imply that certain jurors might take pity on him if he came clean with his reasons for killing Araujo. "You'd be surprised. Moms – especially moms – if they knew the facts – you'd be surprised," he told Magidson in an apparent effort to get to him to discuss the details of the crime.
It is Magidson's defense in court that his role in Araujo's killing was motivated by the "heat of passion" rather than premeditated murder. He also denies that he was involved in any speculation about Araujo's gender before the night she was killed.
Magidson's demeanor has been described as unremorseful by those in attendance at this week's court hearings.
"It was good to finally hear him speak. It confirms my theory that he is a cold-hearted killer," David Guerrero, Araujo's uncle, told the Bay Area Reporter outside the courthouse. "He has no remorse. He is still blaming Gwen for her own death. And I'm not surprised that none of the defendants are taking responsibility and continue to put the blame on their friends."
Magidson is expected to continue his testimony and then face cross-examination by the other defense attorneys and the prosecution.