REDWOOD CITY — After courtroom drama Monday abruptly ended the defense’s case in the middle of the defendant’s testimony, a man accused of beheading his child’s mother with a sword last year skipped out on his own trial Tuesday, while his own mother provided emotional testimony in court.
Jose Rafael Solano Landaeta’s absence came just one day after a bizarre courtroom episode that unfolded when the 34-year-old defendant was cross-examined by prosecutors: He denied committing the killing and even denied recognizing a photo of the victim — 27-year-old Karina Castro — while testifying under oath. Solano then became nonresponsive for the rest of his cross-examination, prompting Judge Lisa Novak to recess court for the day.
Solano is accused of the daytime killing of Castro, allegedly using a sword that he pulled from his car as the two were arguing. Authorities say Solano used the sword to hack Castro to death, cutting off one of her arms and striking her at least seven times on her head and neck.
After Solano went through his period of nonresponsiveness on the stand and the jury had been excused, prosecutors noted their displeasure on the record, saying that Solano had resumed speaking shortly after jurors left.
After Novak announced that Solano “elected not to participate,” Tuesday afternoon saw parents of both involved parties — Solano and Castro — take the stand.
Castro’s father, Martin, testified briefly touching on a few specifics key to the assertion by Solano’s attorneys that he was acting in self-defense.
Later, jurors heard from Eva Solano Landaeta, the defendant’s mother. He called her on the morning of the slaying, she said.
“I heard from my son when he called me in a very strange voice,” she said. “I saw something was happening because the tone of his voice wasn’t very good.”
She said she left her apartment — mere blocks from the crime scene — saw a law enforcement officer and thought, “Oh god, what did he do?”
When she came upon her son, she said, he was standing in the middle of the street, shaking and drooling.
“I grabbed him by his shoulders and I gave him a kiss on his forehead. I told him, ‘you did something, you have to turn yourself in.’ ”
She took her son by the hand and walked him to the crime scene, telling a law enforcement officer that Jose was there to turn himself in.
While Solano’s attorney focused on Jose’s history of mental illness in his questioning of Eva Solano-Landaeta, prosecutor Josh Stauffer asked if she’d witnessed the defendant act truly violent during any of the episodes she cited. She said she had not.
When Jose wasn’t taking his prescribed medication to deal with the illness, she said, he was “completely out of control.”
“Sometimes he’d give a response of screaming at me or his little brother,” she said. “I tried my best to get him back but it took me a while to get him back to normal.”
That time frame of “getting back to normal” became a key point of contention a day after Jose went silent in the courtroom.
Stauffer asked if Solano would commonly snap out of his “catatonic state” and begin speaking again after 20 or 30 minutes; his mother said she had never seen him snap out of it that quickly.
Stauffer presented text messages from her phone that had been deleted, along with all other messages, by the time she turned it in to police for evidence. Shortly after the killing, she sent four text messages to her ex-husband — Jose’s father — in Spanish, advising him that the police would interview him and that he should “be careful what you say and don’t give voluntary information.”
The defendant’s mother claimed that she remembered sending these texts but didn’t remember who she sent them to. When asked why she deleted her messages, she said “everyone deletes their messages.”
The unpredictable nature of Monday’s situation led the trial to resume Tuesday morning behind closed doors and with no jury as Novak decided whether or not to strike Solano’s testimony from the record. She ultimately decided against it, San Mateo County District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe told the Bay Area News Group on Tuesday afternoon.
Wagstaffe also said earlier Tuesday that calling for a mistrial was “out of the question” since the defense was set to rest its case Tuesday afternoon.
The killing itself was not in question; the attack on Castro on a San Carlos street in September 2022 was seen by several witnesses. One of them testified at the trial’s opening, recalling that as she walked home from brunch with friends, she saw Solano and Castro argue, then watched in horror as Solano got the sword from his car and brutally attacked Castro.
Solano’s attorneys discarded a preliminary legal claim that the defendant was legally insane at the time of the killing, instead rallying around an “imperfect self-defense” argument over the course of the trial, which began earlier this month. The claim rests on several assertions — that Solano, described by his attorney as a man who experienced chronic paranoia and schizophrenia, had gone to meet Castro in an effort to de-escalate an ongoing argument between the two, and that he was motivated to defend himself by fears fed by online threats the victim made before the fatal encounter.
Castro’s relatives and friends — including her father, mother and grandmother — have sat in the gallery for portions of the trial. They wept as prosecutors described the killing during opening arguments.
The trial is set to resume Wednesday.
