Flores, 45, is accused of murdering Smart while she was a student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. In April, a judge moved the trial north to Monterey County after ruling Flores would be unable to get …
SALINAS — The attorney for Paul Flores, accused of murdering Kristin Smart in 1996, wrapped up his closing argument Tuesday arguing that prosecutors have no evidence to support their case.
“This case was not prosecuted all these years because there was no evidence,” defense attorney Robert Sanger said in a Salinas courtroom. “And there’s still no evidence.” Flores, 45, is accused of murdering Smart while she was a student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. In April, a judge moved the trial north to Monterey County after ruling Flores would be unable to get a fair trial in San Luis Obispo County. Flores’ father, 80-year-old Ruben Flores, was charged with helping dispose of Smart’s body, which was never found. Both men pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors argue that Flores killed the 19-year-old during an attempted rape on May 25, 1996, in his dorm room at Cal Poly, where both were first-year students. His father allegedly helped bury the slain student behind his home in the nearby community of Arroyo Grande and later dug up the remains and moved them.
Sanger used the closing argument to try and poke holes in the case prosecutors laid out in the 11 weeks since the trial began in July.While reviewing the testimony of non-expert witnesses in the trial, Sanger said the media coverage, including a podcast titled “Your Own Backyard,” in which San Luis Obispo County Sheriff Ian Parkinson credited the podcast with helping break the case open in 2021, had influenced their testimony.
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