Jury rejects demon-made-me-do-it defense

Miami, USA - Whatever special powers Lazaro Galindo thought Satan would grant him couldn't sway a jury Thursday, which convicted him of second-degree murder in just two hours and 15 minutes.

Galindo confessed that he killed Argelio Gonzalez in 2000, claiming that a demon named Candelo possessed his body and promised him special powers if he killed. He also told a Miami-Dade police sergeant that Gonzalez was his girlfriend's ex-boyfriend and that he had been coming around too much.

Galindo, who defended himself during the four-day trial, had trouble presenting a coherent defense. He offered the jury several scenarios, some of them conflicting, and claimed he was just a normal 19-year-old kid in 2000, albeit one who liked the occult.

''Yes, this did happen, from an evil person, someone with evil intent,'' he said during his closing statement. ``But it wasn't me.''

Galindo had initially planned to wear Satanist garb to his trial -- and had insisted on his constitutional right to do so -- but he informed the court on Monday that he had found God sometime over the weekend.

At one point during his closing arguments, he claimed he never made the confession: ''At no time did I say I killed for Candelo or I killed for Satan.'' Then he claimed he made it only under duress because he was in pain from deep cuts he had on his hands and legs and he hadn't had his pain medication.

In 2000, he told detectives he got the cuts struggling with Gonzalez.

He even suggested that prosecutors should have tried to locate Candelo.

''The confession was not only made by myself,'' he said. ``There was a third person in there . . . the demon Candelo.''

Galindo also offered various alternative theories of who committed the murder -- a gang, the Mafia, even suicide.

But when he tried to get a medical examiner to say Gonzalez might have killed himself, the doctor pointed out that Gonzalez suffered stab wounds in his back and was found dismembered in two garbage cans in a Brownsville park, without his fingers.

She said it was hard to imagine how he could have done that to himself.

In contrast, Assistant State Attorney Herbert E. Walker III focused on one key piece of evidence: a pair of bloody gloves.

Detectives found the yellow latex gloves in the kitchen sink of Galindo's apartment. And criminologists found pieces of Gonzalez's brain on the gloves, confirmed through DNA testing.

''The bloody gloves in the O.J. case might have exonerated him. . . . These bloody gloves point directly at this man,'' Walker said, laying the gloves on the defense table and pointing at Galindo.

He also pointed out that most of the details in Galindo's confession were confirmed when Galindo led detectives to various pieces of evidence.

Some of Galindo's arguments he simply dismissed.

''How on Earth would the state be able to prove that the defendant conspired with a disembodied spirit to commit this killing?'' he asked the jury.

Galindo, who is already serving a 45-year sentence for violating his probation in a molestation case, faces a life term for the murder.

Circuit Judge Peter Adrien set sentencing for next month and tried to appoint an attorney to handle Galindo's appeal, but Galindo insisted he wanted to do that himself too.