The penalty phase began on the first workday of 2016, after jurors had been able to distract themselves with Christmas and New Year’s. With the merriment of the holiday season behind them, they were once again confronted by the gory, disturbing details of the double homicide.
While the purpose of the trial had been analyzing the evidence and determining guilt, the penalty phase would consider the circumstances of the crimes, Dan’s frame of mind at the time of the killings, and the sense of loss suffered by the families of Sam Herr and Juri Kibuishi.
“We spent a lot of time talking about Daniel Wozniak,” senior deputy district attorney Matt Murphy told jurors in his opening statement. “Now in the penalty phase, you get to think about those people.”
Although jurors would vote on whether Dan received life imprisonment or the death penalty, the final decision was ultimately made by Judge John Conley. However, the process was largely a formality. The likelihood of a California judge rejecting a jury’s recommendation in a capital case was next to impossible.
From the moment Dan’s attorney Tracy LeSage stood to make her opening statement, it was clear that the defense had no intention of diminishing the atrociousness of the crimes. Rather, LeSage stressed that it was important to “keep an open mind.” Dan’s once-promising life “took a tragic detour,” she said, urging the jury to “be fair to both sides.”
But viewing the case objectively was going to be a challenge. While the families may have questioned the authorities’ behavior earlier in the case, Murphy now emphatically spoke on their behalf. Dan’s actions were “as cold as it gets,” he insisted, reminding jurors that they’d seen the tape of Dan describing how he’d laughed while cutting off Sam’s head. Juri, according to the prosecutor, had been used as “a ruse … a stage prop.” All because Dan needed funds for his upcoming wedding. “That is the most base, vile motive of all. It’s money.”
The fact that Sam was killed simply so Dan could drain the veteran’s combat pay was “enough to come back with the death penalty,” Murphy said. But he stressed that jurors should also remember that the killer sang and danced alongside his fiancée in Nine while planning Juri’s demise. “Folks,” Murphy said, “that is disgusting.”
If the facts weren’t strong enough, Murphy called friends and relatives of the deceased to underscore the prosecution’s position. Miles Foltz choked up while recalling how, while serving in the U.S. military together, he and Sam each pledged to be the best man at their respective weddings. It was Sam who introduced Miles to his wife—at the pool of the Camden Martinique complex where the killer and victim both lived. When Sam’s murder precluded him from making good on his pledge, Miles said, Steve stood in for his son.
Wistfully, Miles spoke about the way Sam always dressed up wherever they traveled—to the point that their Army friends nicknamed him Suit. Because of Dan Wozniak’s actions, Miles claimed, he could no longer slip on a jacket and tie. “I don’t wear them anymore,” he testified. “The only thing I think of when I put them on is how much I miss him.”
There could have been more testimony about Sam’s loyalty, humor, and bravery in Afghanistan. But prosecutors were cautious. Before the trial, Scott Sanders had submitted a list of witnesses related to Sam’s 2002 murder case. Judge Conley had struck down the effort; this was about Dan Wozniak’s guilt, not a series of proceedings in which Sam was acquitted. But the threat loomed. If there was too much emphasis on Sam’s attributes, the defense might again attempt to attack Sam’s character by invoking the death of Byron Benito.
Still, Miles was allowed to speak. As a veteran himself, the judge appreciated the bonds formed in combat and believed that Miles was entitled to express his bereavement over a comrade taken prematurely. While observers could sympathize with Miles’ longing for his friend, the testimonies of Sam’s and Juri’s families unfettered a storm of wrath, along with sorrow.
Steve described viewing his son’s body in the mortuary. Although parts of the dismembered corpse were stitched together, one of the arms was still missing. Sam’s head was wrapped to hide his mangled, unrecognizable features.
“Animals got to my son’s body parts in El Dorado Park,” Steve said. “They found him. They ate his flesh off him. They urinated on my son.”
While people in the gallery cried, Steve spoke about his need to remember what Dan Wozniak did after Sammy was already dead: “In my mind, I see him whacking away at my son’s head. I see him sawing my son’s arm off. I have trouble sleeping at night because when I turn off the TV, that’s what I see. I don’t want to forget the heinousness of this.”
Murphy prodded Steve along. “As time goes on,” the prosecutor asked, “the pain and anger, does it go away?”
“No, I visit my son’s grave every week. The one thing I get out of this is that my anger and my hate has grown exponentially.”
Juri’s brother Taka admitted to struggling with guilt for allowing his sister to leave his side to go to Sam’s apartment—where she was shot between the right ear and the tiara that her brother had given her. “I had so many chances to stop her,” he said, crying. “I protected and helped her her whole life, and she was with me [before she was killed].”
Like Murphy, Taka was revolted over Dan’s admission that he slaughtered two people in order to secure the money that Sam had saved while serving his country. “We lost Sam and Julie for something so simple,” Taka said. “It’s pathetic.”
The best character witness the defense could produce was a fellow inmate, convicted gun burglar Daniel Munoz, who recounted that Wozniak was “generous” in the way that he shared soup in jail, and “talked about God.”
According to Scott Sanders, Munoz’s testimony showed “what a person can become after they do something terrible. Is he redeemable? Is it a life that has value?”
Murphy appeared unimpressed by Munoz. “I’m surprised that guy didn’t get arrested again going out of the courthouse,” he cracked.
Like at the trial, Sanders mentioned Rachel’s possible involvement in the crime, but this time he presented four witnesses—including one of the former Disney princess’ ex-boyfriends—who described her as “manipulative” and controlling.”
Mentioning the disdainful view certain detectives had toward Dan’s fiancée, Sanders characterized Rachel as the mastermind of the relationship—and, possibly, her boyfriend’s offenses. “She’s the smarter of the two by far.”
During college, an acquaintance told the court, Rachel had engineered a scheme to embarrass a friend in a love triangle. “It’s this weird thrill about putting people in dangerous situations,” Sanders said.
In another instance, jurors heard a story about Rachel encouraging an associate to steal. “She does get off on stuff she shouldn’t get off on,” the attorney said. “I say Rachel Buffett is relevant to the circumstances of the crime.”
Argued Sanders, “The circumstances of the case include who you’re with and what these effects are on your life. Think about who’s in the household and who he’s marrying.”
But Murphy was dismissive of the strategy. “They need a villain,” he said, “someone to point a finger at to distract you from what Daniel Wozniak did.” Even if Rachel was involved, the prosecutor stated, it wouldn’t lessen Dan’s blame.
“That man made a series of decisions that brought us all together,” Murphy said, motioning at Dan, “and Rachel is not responsible for what he did. Each one of us is responsible for our own decisions.”
Even so, Sanders told jurors in his closing arguments, there was enough uncertainty about the nature of the relationship that Dan should be spared the death penalty. “There are no words to describe the horrific nature of the crimes,” Sanders conceded. But a sentence of life without the possibility of parole, he continued, would still honor the lives of Dan’s victims.
Despite his acumen for filing motions, Sanders’ words did nothing to persuade jurors. On January 11, 2016, after slightly more than an hour of deliberation, the jury recommended that Dan Wozniak be put to death.
Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas had never seen a jury return a swifter decision on capital punishment.
For the first time during the proceedings, the condemned looked concerned. He glanced down for a moment, blinked several times, and gazed over at the jurors. When he looked down again, he appeared completely on his own. No one rubbed his back or whispered reassuring words in his ear. Although they were seated beside Dan, both Tracy LeSage and Scott Sanders appeared to be thinking about other things.
“The lies, the dismemberment, the murder for money—it was all terrible,” one juror told the Orange County Register. “Sam was a veteran who served in dangerous places and then, he comes to Orange County, the safest place you would expect, and he’s killed. It was so unnecessary.”
Upon hearing the jury’s recommendation, the Kibuishis grasped one another and cried. Junko reached for the chain around her neck and held on to the ring that Juri was wearing on the night she died.
“Now, it’s over,” Junko said.
Taka stood back and watched the media swarm his grieving parents, along with the Herrs, as they spilled from the courtroom into the hall, marveling at the way both families had managed the press while remaining focused on the details of the case.
“It was so, so, so, so long overdue,” Steve told the cameras. “But I can start healing.”
The normally reticent Raquel spoke, too. “It’s a closure,” she said in her Argentinean accent. “I feel like a ton off my shoulders.”
Junko described the recommendation as “closure to our nightmare chapter.” She’d later say that she wished there was an even stronger penalty than lethal injection. While there was no joy in knowing Wozniak’s fate, hearing the word “death” uttered in the courtroom filled the mother with “relief and thankfulness to the jurors for understanding our pain.”
Noted Steve, “It was very therapeutic to know that twelve people from different cultures, genders, and beliefs found that certain crimes can be so heinous, so terrible, that death is the only justifiable option.” He laughed to himself. “And in just over an hour. I was expecting days of deliberation. I mean, this is a guy’s life. But it only took them an hour to see what we’d been seeing the whole time.”
In fact, the decision had not been an easy one. Several jurors privately cried over their conclusion that a man deserved to have his life taken away. But two images persuaded them: the photo of a grief-stricken Steve and Raquel at their son’s funeral and a picture of a younger Juri engrossed in a dance performance.
Jury forewoman Jenny Wong made it a point to hug both families. She told the media that the jurors never thought that Rachel Buffett’s influence had any effect on Dan’s guilt. “We felt that was just smoke and mirrors,” she said. In fact, there was an “utter lack” of mitigating factors in the murders.
The families left the Superior Court building determined to continue their relationship away from lawyers and detectives and court officers. Junko told the Herrs that she remembered Juri describing Sam’s kindness and realized that he’d inherited his goodness from his parents. Steve spoke about Juri’s “golden heart.”
One day in court, Steve had brought the Kibuishis a present: hundreds of flash cards that Juri had made to prepare Sam for an anthropology exam. “And he got an A, by the way,” Steve said.
Over the course of five years and seven months, he’d come to know a lot about Juri’s family. When they weren’t discussing the case, Junko was frequently expressing admiration for the Los Angeles Lakers. To Steve, the immigrant’s dedication to a team that, at the time, was battling the Philadelphia 76ers for the worst record in the NBA was thoroughly charming.
In fact, it was reminiscent of the “hopeless romantic” description often attributed to Juri.
“This tremendous tragedy,” he said, “brought love between two families.”
Despite the sentence, Steve was aware that he was going to continue to see Daniel Wozniak in court for years to come. In California, all death sentences are automatically appealed. Of the nine hundred people sentenced to die in California since 1978, only thirteen had actually been executed, as of this writing. In fact, no one had been put to death in the state since 2006, when a judge ruled that a three-drug lethal injection combination was “inhumane.”
Authorities now advocated for a one-drug injection that could restart the process. Nonetheless, on average there was a twenty-five-year gap between death sentences being imposed in California and carried out.
“I’m very realistic,” Steve said. “The years of appeals are to be expected. I’ve always known this, just as I know that I probably won’t be around if and when Daniel Wozniak is actually put to sleep. I’ll be at all those hearings. But, right now, I’m grateful that I got the best that I could get.”
Although he’d fantasized about confronting Scott Sanders during the trial, Steve now wanted to shift his attention to other matters. After all, Sam would have wanted his parents to pursue activities that relaxed and enriched them. Steve continued working out and played golf once a week. Since childhood, Raquel had been playing accordion, guitar, keyboards, and flute—all by ear. Now she wanted to take formal lessons.
As two former teachers, the Herrs spoke about volunteering their time to help children. Despite everything that they’d endured, they were grateful for the years that Sam had been in their lives and for the people who had come to comfort them since his death.
They still wanted to give something back.
“This has taken a huge load off our backs,” Steve reflected. “Before this happened, we were very private people. But we didn’t hide our feelings with each other. Sam was a big lug. But we’d always hug him and kiss him. We still feel like doing that. But now, it’s in our hearts.”