Ortega's Attorney Maintains Client's Innocence

After the jury was unable to reach a verdict in the attempt murder and conspiracy trial of Mary Sharpski, Michael Shores and Antonio Ortega, Ortega's attorney, Derek Bercher, said he's looking forward to defending his client again in the retrial.

I'm disappointed the guy's not going home, but the jury took their time and looked at the evidence," Bercher said. "We didn't get the result we wanted, but we'll get it next time. The things the jury said were very encouraging. I'm sure we're going to have to do it again, but it's a good result for what it was."

Ortega, 25, of Santa Ana, along with Sharpski, 48, and Shores, 40, both of Fountain Valley, are charged with plotting to kill Frank Sharpski, known to friends and family as Rick, in March 2009. As part of the alleged conspiracy with Shores and Sharpski, Ortega is accused of attacking Rick Sharpski with a machete in an alley outside of the couple’s home and leaving him to die on the morning of March 3, 2009, fracturing his skull, severing a thumb and fingers, partly severing his nose and causing several other machete wounds.

After several days of deliberation, the jury deadlocked Thursday at 9-3 in favor of convicting Ortega, split 6-6 on Shores and was 7-5 in favor of a not guilty verdict for Sharpski. Bercher maintained, as he did throughout his defense, that Ortega lacked motive for the attack because he led his own well-adjusted life independent of his relationship with Shores and Sharpski, who had to endure Rick Sharpski's abusive behavior on an everyday basis.

"This problem primarily originated in their house," Bercher said. "The whole domestic violence angle, the relationship between the co-defendants, none of that had anything to do with my client. But the D.A.'s trying to do guilt by association. Whatever happens, probably the worst-case scenario was us being on trial with them. If it's just us, that gives us more control about what the jury hears."

Another key point in Bercher's defense of Ortega was his alternate theory of the attack, supported by Ortega's own testmony that he had loaned the machete used in the attack to a friend named John Canvin, someone, Ortega said, who would have needed the $5,000 allegedly offered to Ortega to commit the attack. Canvin was never called as a witness by either the prosecution or defense, and Bercher wouldn't say whether he'd do so as part of any retrial.

My position has remained consistent, which is that [Ortega] didn't do it," Brecher said. "Instead of trying to convict us a second time, they should probably try to figure out who really did it. My job's not to prosecute the case. I don't know who did it. I can only make suggestions. I don't have the resources they have to figure it out."