Amid a sweeping federal investigation five years ago of violent street gang activity, two gang members told authorities they had witnessed the drive-by killing of a 22-year-old Norcross woman.
They told FBI agents – and, later, a federal grand jury -- that Daniel Cortes, a 16-year-old member of the Sur-13 gang, shot and killed Rebecca Moore in the pre-dawn hours of Jan. 25, 2001.
Those statements came five years too late for David Peralta. Six months after Moore's slaying, he was convicted of her murder and has been serving a life sentence ever since.
Cortes cannot respond to the new accusations. Almost two months after Moore's death, Cortes, who was called "Vago," was fatally shot several times at a Roswell park near the Chattahoochee River.
On Wednesday, Peralta sat in a DeKalb County courtroom before the same judge who sentenced him to life in prison. His new lawyers from the law firm King & Spalding, which is representing Peralta for free, asked Superior Court Judge Daniel Coursey to order a new trial based on newly discovered evidence.
"My firm would not have taken the case if we were not entirely convinced a grave injustice was committed," said lawyer Tully Blalock, joined by attorneys Bill Hoffman and Suzanne Williams.
Blalock said the firm got involved after the federal prosecutor leading the gang investigation disclosed the new witness testimony to Peralta in 2008.
The key statements come from two men who were in a rival gang of Peralta's and who say they were in the car with Cortes when he opened fire on the white Cadillac Moore was riding in. “There’s no doubt this evidence undermines the confidence of the verdict," Blalock said.
DeKalb prosecutors aren't buying it. Michael Carlson, who heads the county’s gang unit, said his office obtained the conviction of the real killer.
Peralta fled Atlanta for New Orleans when he knew police were looking for him, Carlson told Coursey. "Those are not the actions of an innocent man," he said
Carlson also said Peralta is now "conveniently" pinning the murder on a dead man and that federal prosecutors never charged Sur-13 gang members for their involvement in Moore's killing.
Coursey did not indicate when he would issue a ruling.
Extraordinary motions for a new trial are difficult to win in a justice system that gives great weight to the finality of a jury's verdict and particularly when there is no DNA evidence to provide absolute proof of exoneration. But Peralta's case is highly unusual in that his new evidence was developed by FBI agents assigned to a gang task force and by federal prosecutors during grand jury proceedings.
U.S. Attorney Sally Yates said Thursday that when her office learned there was evidence suggesting Peralta may not have been responsible for Moore's murder, prosecutors obtained a court order allowing them to give that evidence to the DeKalb District Attorney's Office. The U.S. Attorney's Office also provided additional information to Peralta's lawyers, facilitated interviews of witnesses with Peralta's lawyers and arranged for the FBI to disclose information to Peralta's legal team, she said.
DeKalb prosecutors have said Peralta, then a member of the Latin Kings gang and known as "Creeper," killed Moore because she openly criticized him in front of other gang members and was threatening to disclose their sexual relationship with Peralta's fiance who was pregnant with his child.
At Peralta's trial, witnesses testified that Moore and her roommate went to Ballyhoos, a bar at the Embry Hills Plaza on Chamblee Tucker Road, shortly after 1 a.m. on Jan. 25, 2001.
The two women met up with two sets of brothers – Gabriel and Israel Bernal and Armando and Santiago Coronado. Peralta was also at the nightclub and Moore twice walked up to Peralta and confronted him, pointing her finger in his face, witnesses said.
Moore left the nightclub shortly after 3:30 a.m. with the two sets of brothers and drove off in Israel Bernal’s white Cadillac.
Moore sat in the back seat, straddling Armando Coronado’s lap, with her roommate and Santiago Coronado seated next to them. When Moore said she needed to use the restroom, the Cadillac turned into a Shell station on Pleasantdale Road. As the car entered the station, gunshots shattered the car’s windows and bullets entered the right side of Moore's neck and her right arm. She died at the scene.
At trial, none of the passengers identified Peralta as the shooter. But Gabriel Bernal testified he saw the shooter out of the corner of his eye and described him as a light-skinned, bald-headed Latino man riding in the front passenger seat of a dark green, four-door Honda with shiny rims. That description matched Peralta.
Two inmates who were housed in the DeKalb jail with Peralta before his trial also testified Peralta told them he killed Moore because she was about to divulge their relationship to Peralta's fiance. But in 2002, during an earlier and unsuccessful motion for a new trial, one of those two men testified he lied at Peralta's trial to get DeKalb prosecutors to drop some of the charges against him.
The most recent testimony was obtained during a federal investigation that led to the convictions of more than a dozen Sur-13 gang members.
In that case, Sur-13 gang members Gehovany Salazar and Isaac Alamia told FBI agents that they were in a car diving down Pleasantdale Road in the early morning hours of Jan. 25, 2001, when they saw a white Cadillac they thought belonged to a rival gang member. Cortes, who was also in the car, moved into the front passenger seat and opened fire on the Cadillac, Salazar and Alamia said.
The Sur-13 gang members were riding in a dark green four-door Daewoo with shiny rims, Alamia said. During Wednesday's hearing, Blalock, one of Peralta's lawyers, showed Coursey a photo of the Daewoo, noting how closely it resembled the shooter's car described by the surviving passengers in the Cadillac.
Moore's murder was not charged in the federal indictment against the Sur-13 members, but her drive-by killing was discussed during the 2007 trial when Salazar testified for the prosecution. Salazar initially told the federal grand jury he was not in the green Daewoo when Moore was murdered, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kim Dammers told the judge presiding over the trial.
"He then called back the agents and said, ‘Okay, I actually was in the car during it,' " Dammers said. "It was then that we knew, in fact, what the truth was."
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