SAN JOSE — At a news conference last week about the fatal stabbing of a 15-year-old boy at Santana Row allegedly at the hands of a group of gang-affiliated teens, Police Chief Paul Joseph offered a sweeping narrative of a “senseless” attack that rattled the city and drew national media attention.
Joseph recounted that David Gutierrez, while out on a Valentine’s Day evening date with his girlfriend, was approached by the teens and probed about his gang ties, of which he had none. That was followed by the teens — an 18-year-old, three 16-year-olds and a 13-year-old — attacking David as a group.
Then, in the chief’s words, David “managed to escape and ran away from them. However, one of the suspects, a 13-year-old male, pursued him, confronted him again, this time armed with a knife, and the 13-year-old suspect brutally stabbed the victim multiple times.”
But a police affidavit accompanying charges against the lone adult defendant — filed in court a day after the news conference — tells a different story, citing witness accounts, including those of David’s girlfriend and a security guard who broke up the initial attack, as well as surveillance video from a nearby restaurant.
The affidavit, also referred to as a police statement of facts, mostly adheres to the first part of the chief’s telling, but it diverges from there. Detectives wrote that four of the teens ran off, and as the 13-year-old boy, now separated, was presumably trying to leave the scuffle, David “confronted a lone suspect who was wearing red,” according to a police summary of the girlfriend’s account.
According to that same summary, David “wanted to fight one on one. The suspect said he didn’t want to and that he already ‘got his hits in.’ ” David repeated his challenge, and “the suspect then produced a folding pocketknife” and stabbed him.
For the Santa Clara County Public Defender’s Office, which is representing the 13-year-old boy, that difference in narratives is glaring.
“The facts described by the police department indicate that the stabbing was removed from the initial attack … and not a planned attack amongst the group,” Assistant Public Defender Miguel Rodriguez said. “This is important because the younger and smaller 13-year-old’s refusal to engage in a fight, followed by a use of force once there was a fight, lends itself to possible claims of self defense.”
Acting Chief Public Defender Damon Silver also called out what he called politicization of the case when Joseph and Mayor Matt Mahan bemoaned a lack of meaningful consequences in the juvenile justice system for young teens accused of serious violent crimes.
The two city leaders, while being careful not to assert that these forces were explicitly at play in David’s death, described a running strategy by gang leaders to deploy their youngest members to commit violence expressly because they are subject to less incarceration than adult offenders. Joseph, echoed by Mahan, said minors have become gangs’ “killing tool of choice” and that the broader trends “are encouraging juveniles to commit violent offenses more frequently.”
Silver said that even parsed out, those comments unfairly conflate the Santana Row case with those issues, and that it’s important to be clear that “the limited public facts of this situation do not fit the law enforcement and mayor’s narrative of adults using children to commit crimes.”
“Any loss of life is devastating. However, making sweeping system changes in response to a tragic situation almost inevitably results in injustice. It took decades for us to acknowledge that the criminal legal system had been weaponized against communities of color, and our youth of color suffered the greatest,” Silver said. “Returning to failed policies of treating kids like adults and feeding them to a reawakened mass incarceration movement is a cynical and opportunistic response by those who value investing in jails over addressing root causes.”
The police department stood by the remarks at the news conference, saying in a statement that “when the chief mentioned pursuit of the victim, the chief was describing a second confrontation” and emphasized that “the only person who (was) armed was the suspect.” The statement also reiterated that Joseph’s remark about gangs and minors “was not talking about this case specifically.”
Mahan similarly stood by his larger point.
“Every death deserves reflection,” Mahan said in a statement. “And every tragedy should spur action. Given the disturbing level of gang recruitment and activity on our school campuses, and the fact that 30% of gang related incidents in San Jose are committed by kids under 18, we have a responsibility to focus on disrupting gangs’ recruitment of our children and providing alternatives to at-risk youth who deserve better.”
Rodriguez rejected the characterization given at the news conference, particularly a remark lamenting that the maximum punishment for the 13-year-old would be an eight-month stay at a boys’ ranch. He said that ignores other layers of accountability, and incorrectly uses the adult court system as a benchmark.
“In reality, a 13-year-old facing a murder charge in juvenile court will likely be in juvenile hall for years while this case is adjudicated, and will face intense supervision from probation and the courts until age 25. This will likely include additional incarceration if the youth is not rehabilitated,” Rodriguez said. “It should be understood that the juvenile justice system is predicated on rehabilitation, not punishment, so we shouldn’t compare the juvenile system with the adult system when looking at incarceration.”