Famalaro Jury Told That Victim Had Drinks

SANTA ANA — In a move to avoid lengthy questioning about the victim’s behavior, attorneys in the murder trial of John J. Famalaro agreed Monday to tell the jury that Denise Huber’s blood-alcohol content showed she had consumed several drinks the night she disappeared.

The attorneys for the defense and prosecution agreed to tell the jury that Huber’s blood-alcohol level was between .08% and .11% when she pulled over to the side of the Costa Mesa Freeway with a flat tire six years ago.

The agreement acknowledges that in some people, such a blood-alcohol level may cause some impairment of motor skills and result in a loss of inhibition.

The legal limit to operate a vehicle was lowered to .08% in 1990.

“These facts are given to you and you have to accept it,” Superior Court Judge John J. Ryan told the jury. “What you have just heard would have taken half a day of testimony.”

Huntington Beach resident Robert Calvert testified last week that on the night she disappeared, he and Huber had “four to five shots of vodka” each and some beers while at a rock concert in Inglewood, then later at a restaurant in Long Beach. He said they were not intoxicated.

Deputy Public Defender Leonard Gumlia has suggested that Huber may have drunk enough that night to not want to summon help from authorities when her tire blew out and might take “a little more risk than you might otherwise do in that situation.”

The defense has not argued that Famalaro did not kill Huber, but they do contend that he did not kidnap or sodomize the 23-year-old Newport Beach woman. She was missing for three years before her body was found stored in a freezer inside of a Ryder rental truck parked in front of Famalaro’s Arizona home.

The defense is focusing on disproving the two special circumstance allegations of kidnapping and sodomy, which make the 39-year-old Famalaro eligible for the death penalty if he is convicted.

On Monday, Charles A. Sims, associate director of pathology at Century City Hospital in Los Angeles, testified for the defense, attempting to cast doubt on forensic evidence that was identified as sperm taken from Huber’s body by two earlier prosecution witnesses. Sims said Monday that the evidence could not definitely be called sperm.

But during aggressive cross-examination by Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher Evans, Sims admitted that he had not viewed such forensic samples in the last two decades prior to this case, and that he was not testifying in his area of expertise.

Sims is one of the medical directors of the California Cryo Bank, a sperm bank. Under the cross-exam, he did not rule out that the samples, detected by a forensic scientist in Orange County and a criminalist in Ventura County, might be sperm.

“I think they resemble sperm,” Sims said. “They are possible sperm. My level of certainty is not 100%. I think it’s 50-50.”

Also Monday, Ryan ruled that the defense will be allowed to tell the jury about an experiment with a pair of high-heeled shoes similar to those Huber was wearing when she disappeared. They will tell the jury that walking up and down a freeway embankment could result in the same type of damage to Huber’s shoes that Evans says was the result of the victim being “dragged.”

The defense is expected to finish presenting their case this morning with the case likely to go to the jury on Thursday.

The victim’s parents, Dennis and Ione Huber, have attended each day of the trial and said they are pleased with the prosecution’s efforts.

Anne Famalaro, the defendant’s 71-year-old mother, was also in court Monday. Her son looked to her each time he was brought in and out of the courtroom. The mother said she was there “to support the real John Famalaro, not the one you see here in court.”