The 1997 murder of a popular Arvin High School football captain roiled the Arvin-Lamont communities as many pondered how such a ruthless act could have happened in their town.
Almost 4,000 people flocked to Arvin High School’s football stadium to mourn Yarbrough’s murder, according to The Californian’s previous reporting. Juan Villa Ramirez and Efrain Garza, who were convicted of the crime and expected to spend the rest of their lives in prison for it — but just last week, Garza filed a petition to be resentenced, citing a bill changing the definition of felony murder.
Defense attorney Richard Rivera, who represents Garza, wrote in an email Monday that his client didn’t kill Yarbrough. Senate Bill 1437 changes murder’s definition to exclude those who didn’t kill the victim.
Garza: Nothing to be done to ‘take away the pain you’ve all felt’
On Oct. 14, 1997, Yarbrough dropped off his girlfriend at her house, and was driving himself and his brother when two men flagged them down, according to testimony from Brent Yarbrough, Chad’s brother, during Ramirez’s trial, according to previous reporting by The Californian.
Ramirez and Garza approached the Yarbroughs while they sat in a truck, according to an opinion filed in the Fifth District Court of Appeal. Garza pointed a gun at Chad Yarbrough, and ordered them out of the vehicle, according to the opinion, which was released Thursday.
Brent Yarbrough got out while his brother remained in the truck, and it was driven away, according to an appeal opinion.
Chad Yarbrough was later found dead with three gunshot wounds to his head in an orange grove, according to previous reporting. He was found only wearing his underwear, duct tape across his eyes and his hands bound behind his back, previous reporting stated.
The Kern County District Attorney charged Garza with first-degree murder, carjacking and kidnapping to commit robbery or rape. He pleaded no contest to first-degree murder while the other charges were dismissed in a plea deal. Garza, who was sentenced to life without parole on his 21st birthday, agreed to the plea once prosecutors dropped the death penalty, previous reporting said. He has also received a sentence of life without the possibility of parole for an unrelated kidnapping and robbery case, which has not been appealed as the result of SB 1437.
“There is nothing I could say to take away the pain you’ve all felt,” according to a letter penned by Garza to the Yarbrough family and read aloud during his sentencing hearing by defense attorney Joseph King, according to previous reporting.
Ramirez testified in his own trial that he and a friend kidnapped Chad Yarbrough after being told the football captain had pounded windows of Ramirez’s aunt’s house and thrown a motorcycle at her, previous reporting said.
According to testimony, Ramirez sought an apology from Yarbrough about the incident and a promise to not act the same way again.
Chad Yarbrough was brought to a field, and Ramirez said he put an ammunition clip into the gun, hoping the sound would scare Yarbrough, previous recording said. That’s when the gun fired accidentally, previous reporting added.
“I was confused,” Ramirez testified during his 2001 trial, as reported by The Californian at the time. “I had made the biggest mistake of my life. I had just taken somebody’s life.”
Ramirez, a co-defendant in the case, got the death penalty after Kern County jurors found him guilty of nine felonies, including first-degree murder, kidnapping to commit robbery or rape and carjacking in 2001. The now-46-year-old man is serving his time at San Quentin State Prison, and will never be eligible for parole.
Gov. Gavin Newsom instituted a moratorium on the death penalty in 2019.
The appeals process
Garza filed a petition in 2019 to be resentenced under Senate Bill 1437, which changed the definition of felony murder.
Previously, a person could be convicted of murder while present during the murder even if they didn’t kill someone. SB 1437 changes the definition of murder to say a person can be convicted or murder if only if they they were the actual killer, acted with the intent to kill, was not a “major participant” in the “underlying felony” and acted with “reckless indifference to human life.”
Kern County Superior Court denied the 2019 petition because Garza had admitted to carjacking Yarbrough, which “required him to admit he was a major participant acting with reckless disregard for human life,” the appeals opinion said.
Garza appealed this decision to the Fifth District Court of Appeal, who agreed his case should be remanded to Kern County for an evidentiary hearing to determine if he should be resentenced.
An evidentiary hearing has not been set for the appeal court decision. Rivera wrote in an email that Thursday’s decision won’t be final for 30 days, and barring no other decision by the state Attorney General, Kern County Superior Court would set the evidentiary hearing.
“At the evidentiary hearing, sometimes called an order to show cause hearing … the prosecution must prove to the judge, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Garza could still be convicted of murder under a still-valid theory murder,” Rivera wrote.
