Deputy District Attorney Ilana Shapiro ended her rebuttal argument Thursday in Solano County Superior Court by telling jurors that Jessica Yesenia Quintanilla and Marco Antonio Quintanilla had “a huge incentive” to dispute the facts of the case involving an Oct. 2021 killing of a 19-year-old Carmel woman.
Shapiro also said Jessica Quintanilla “orchestrated the coverup” of her alleged fatal shooting of Leilani Beauchamp in a Fairfield home.
Her statements, coming in response to final arguments by San Francisco attorneys William Alan Welch and Laurie D. Savill, brought the five-week trial to its close shortly before 4 p.m. in the Justice Center in Fairfield.
Judge William J. Pendergast, who presided over the trial, then read final jury instructions and ordered the 12-member panel to return Friday morning to begin deliberations.
Jessica Quintanilla, 24, of Pittsburg, allegedly shot and killed Beauchamp on the morning of Oct. 30 in a Cascade Lane home while she was lying in bed with Juan Parra-Peralta, with whom Quintanilla once had a romantic relationship. Marco Quintanilla, 30, also of Pittsburg, is charged with being an accessory after the fact and being a felon in possession of a firearm.
At the outset of her final statements, Shapiro asserted that the defense attorneys introduced “pieces of evidence and tried to explain them away.”
Acknowledging the fractious on-again, off-again nature of Parra-Peralta and Jessica Quintanilla’s relationship, she described Quintanilla as “the more aggressive” of the two, noting Quintanilla once called Beauchamp “a bitch” and “punked her out of a car” at a Sacramento sideshow that Parra-Peralta and Beauchamp attended together on a date earlier in October 2021.
Standing just a few feet from the jury box, Shapiro, composed and speaking in an even-toned voice, told jurors that a semi-automatic handgun Jessica Quintanilla owned, a Glock 19, was the murder weapon. She disputed that a semi-automatic handgun owned by Parra-Peralta, a Glock 17, was the murder weapon, as Welch, Quintanilla’s attorney, contended.
In a key part of her rebuttal, Shapiro, using a hand gesture to illustrate she was armed, recalled Jessica Quintanilla’s testimony that she had confronted Parra-Peralta, who, she said, was pointing his gun at her on the morning of Oct. 30 in his second-floor bedroom. Jessica Quintanilla said she grabbed his arm, pushing it toward and flat against the headboard, when the gun discharged, a single bullet striking Beauchamp (pronounced “BEECH-um” during the trial) in the head.
But Shapiro added, if that were true, the bullet would have entered the left side of Beauchamp’s head, when, as forensic pathologist Arnold Josselson testified last month, the bullet entered and exited on the right side of her head.
The nature of the bullet wound “is consistent” with testimony offered at the trial’s outset, said Shapiro.
Additionally, challenging Welch’s assertion that Parra-Peralta, a former airman stationed at nearby Travis Air Force Base, and his close friend and fellow airman Damien Ponders, she said “were not scared” in a base dormitory during the early hours of Oct. 31, after the killing.
“Why was he afraid?” Shapiro asked rhetorically about Parra-Peralta’s behavior. “He saw Jessica shoot someone in the head.”
Also, Marco Quintanilla, after Parra-Peralta and Jessica Quintanilla returned to Pittsburg from Monterey County, where Parra-Peralta dumped Beauchamp’s body down a roadway hillside in rural Salinas, threatened Parra-Peralta while the two sat in a vehicle, saying, “If she goes down, you’re going down.”
Of Savill’s “momentary possession argument” for Marco Quintanilla, who obtained Parra-Peralta’s handgun while in the vehicle, Shapiro said brief possession of handgun by a previously convicted felon does not invalidate the charge.
Also, Marco Quintanilla’s effort to help his sister by threatening Parra-Peralta “is a violation of the law.”
As court records show, Parra-Peralta , 23, and Ponders, 25, were eventually discharged from the Air Force under less-than-honorable conditions but were granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for their testimony.
To Welch’s argument that Parra-Peralta and Ponders had a motive to lie because they faced dismissal from the Air Force, Shapiro asked, “Why are they cooperating now? Because they’re telling the truth.”
Also, Parra-Peralta, the prosecution’s first witness, testified last month that, after the shooting, Quintanilla threatened him with her handgun and continued to do so for most of Oct. 30 and into Oct. 31.
If convicted, Jessica Quintanilla, the mother of two children, ages 7 and 4, and a former assisted-living facility employee in Walnut Creek, faces 25 years to life in prison and perhaps more time for using a firearm.
If convicted of the felony allegations, Marco Quintanilla, who after his arrest in 2021 posted bail and was released, could face up to three years in prison, depending on the circumstances of the case, He could serve more time for being a previously convicted felon for attempted murder in 2013 in Contra Costa County and violation of his parole.
Jurors begin deliberations at 8:30 a.m. Friday in Department 11 in the Justice Center in Fairfield.
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