MARTINEZ — A Richmond man was convicted this month of two murders that occurred nine years apart, and now faces a likely sentence of life without the possibility of parole.
But what makes the case of 39-year-old Antoine Saucer so rare is the fact that the second murder — the 2015 fatal shooting of 66-year-old Carl Roberts — occurred after Saucer had been released from custody with a pending murder case hanging over his head. The unique story of why this occurred centers on California’s system for handling people with mental illnesses who are charged with crimes.
In 2006, Saucer was arrested and charged with murdering Burt Mascarenas, 33, in a shooting on the 600 block of Harbour Way in Richmond. Authorities couldn’t point to a clearcut motive in that killing, but said Mascarenas had joked that Saucer was a snitch because he was quickly released after an arrest at the time, which may have angered Saucer.
But after his arrest, Saucer became one of the hundreds of statewide criminal defendants deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial. His attorney at the time declared a doubt about his competency; after the courts affirmed it, Saucer was transferred to a Porterville hospital, where doctors attempted to “restore” him so he could return to jail and face charges.
It is a system fraught with problems, including unconstitutional delays that result in people spending months in jail after they’ve been found incompetent, a statewide hospital bed shortage, and complex legal issues that make it hard to predict how long someone will spend in a hospital against their will. The state penal code allows confinement for “two years or the maximum time of imprisonment for the most serious offense charged whichever is shorter,” but also lets attorneys seek a conservatorship for people deemed especially dangerous.
At any rate, Saucer was released from the hospital in 2012 after doctors found he couldn’t be “restored to competency” and returned to Richmond. Three years later, he and Anthony Timmons, 24, were arrested and charged with murdering Roberts, whom prosecutors say Saucer believed to be an eyewitness to the Mascarenas killing.
Saucer was arrested two months after Roberts’ Aug. 31, 2015 murder and returned to jail. His defense team again tried to get him found incompetent to stand trial, but after a years-long process, he was deemed competent and ordered to stand trial.
Saucer’s July trial spanned for weeks, but jurors deliberated for roughly four hours before convicting him of both murders, as well as witness intimidation and other charges. His sentencing date has not yet been set. His trial was split with Timmons because both men implicated each other as Roberts’ shooter when police questioned them, which would have pitted them against one another if they’d been tried together.
Saucer’s attorney, Paul Feuerwerker, argued to jurors that police had taken advantage of Saucer during his interrogation, telling him things like, “(Your daughter’s) gonna visit dad in prison,” and implying he’d bee freed if he admitted to being present at Roberts’ murder scene.
“He decides, ‘Maybe if I just say I was there … I won’t have to go to jail, I’ll go home,” Feuerwerker told jurors during closing argument. He also painted a key prosecution witness, one of Sacuer’s ex-girlfriends, as a spurned lover who implicated him in Roberts’ murder out of spite.
After trial, deputy district attorney Satish Jallepalli said he was glad the jury “saw through Saucer’s claims and saw the truth for what it was.” He said he was unsure of the specifics behind the decision to release Saucer years before Roberts was killed.“I know the families are happy that even though things got delayed for quite some time they got some justice in this case,” Jallepalli said.
Richmond man, released from jail with pending murder charge, murdered a second man he thought witnessed first killing - East Bay Times
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