Michelle Gutierrez, a wife who fatally stabbed her husband, Cesar Reyes Zuna, 38-years-old, on the morning of his birthday back in 2021, as he lay in bed at their Santa Ana home was finally convicted this Wednesday of murder.
The jury found Gutierrez guilty of second-degree murder after deliberating for just over five hours for the killing of her husband at their home, located at the 1000 block of West Bishop Street.
Gutierrez’ defense attorney, O.C. Deputy Public Defender Jazmine Torres. claimed that the murder was the fault of mental issues created by a medication Gutierrez was taking for seizures.
Senior Assistant District Attorney Susan Price, the prosectuor, alleged that Gutierrez grabbed two kitchen knives, then locked the door to her bedroom before using both knives to repeatedly stab her husband. He was wounded on his neck and in the back, as he fell out of their bed.
Price told the jury that a pulsometer was found on the bloody sheets. She made the case that Gutierrez used the pulsometer to ensure her husband was dead after the attack.
Price also noted that the couple had an argument the previous night. Gutierrez had then asked a friend to come by in the morning to take her children to a relative’s home. This indicated that she was already planning her deadly attack.
As Price made her closing arguments she told the jury that Gutierrez “pinned him down and made sure he was dead.”
Sadly the couple’s two children heard their father scream as he was attacked. The kids apparently tried to force their way into their parents bedroom by kicking, hitting and even using Nerf guns on the locked door.
According to court testimony, the kids heard their mother saying “You did this to yourself” over and over, as she mercilessly attacked their father.
SAPD police officers arrived at the home to find a scened described by price as “incredibly graphic with blood everywhere.”
Gutierrez later had remorse about her actions. She reportedly attempted to take her own life, and while talking to nurses, she made remorseful comments about killing her husband.
Investigators later found a journal written by Gutierrez where she expressed feeling “desperate” before the fatal attack.
Gutierrez had previously cheated on and lied to her husband and she was worried that he was now doing the same, according to Price.
Guttierez also worried their marriage was falling apart and that she was in danger of losing her kids, according to Price.
Ironically Gutierrez’ criminal actions eventually ensured that she did lose her kids, who presumably were placed with relatives or if foster care after the deadly attack.
The Public Defender, Torres, did not even try to argue that Gutierrez had killed her husband. Instead Torres focused on the notion that the murder was not a premeditated slaying, as described by Price.
Torres told the jury, during her closing arguments, that “There is no motive, there is no planning, there is nothing calculated about this case.”
Gutierrez was taking anti-seizure medications because, just before the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns began in early 2020, she hadsuffered the first of several epileptic seizures.
In the months before she murdered her husband’s, Gutierrez struggled with side effects to the medication she was taking to deal with the seizures, according to Torres.
Torres alleged that the medication left Gutierrez’s mental health spiraling downward. Gutierrez’ paranoid and delusional thinking included believing that people were watching her, that someone had hacked her digital accounts and that her husband had even taken a life insurance policy out on her and he wanted to kill her.
Torres claimed that Gutierrez “knew something was wrong, but she didn’t understand what was going wrong. It was her new reality.”
Price was not buying that argument. She told the jury that having a psychotic reaction to the type of anti-seizure medications that Gutierrez was taking is extremely rare.
Price said “You don’t get a pass because you have anxiety. You don’t get a pass because life is hard.”
Gutierrez and Zuna grew up together in the same Santa Ana neighborhood where the murder happened. Both of their parents lived in homes down the street. Like so many Santa Ana residents they grew up in Santa Ana and never left until Gutierrez killed Zuna.
Gutierrez now is facing up to 16 years to life in prison. She is set to return to court for sentencing on May 30. She was 32 years old when she killed Zuna back in 2021. She is now 36-years-old and will be in her 50’s sixteen years from now.
Her kids, who heard the ruckus as Gutierrez stabbed their father to death, will no doubt be scarred for life. Hopefully they were taken in by relatives otherwise the face the dim prospect of being raised in foster care.
