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Navarrete-Portillo gets life; victim’s sister: ‘she didn’t deserve what happened to her’

Arturo Navarrete-Portillo
Staff Photo |

A jury deliberated about six hours Wednesday to convict Arturo Navarrete-Portillo of first-degree murder in the machete slaying of his wife in Carbondale last year.

The disturbing case, which emerged after Navarrete-Portillo slammed his SUV into the back of a cattle truck on Feb. 16, 2015, about three hours after the slaying, was Carbondale’s first homicide in more than a decade. After first being taken to Valley View Hospital, then air transported to a Grand Junction hospital, he told medical professionals that he had killed his wife, setting off an hours-long search for her body.

Navarrete-Portillo’s public defenders admitted he killed Maria Carminda Portillo-Amaya, but argued for a second-degree murder conviction. They contended he was too drunk to have deliberated the slaying, a requirement for a first-degree conviction, and killed Portillo-Amaya in a mindless rage after she provoked him.



“I’m very thankful that justice is going to be served because my sister didn’t deserve what happened to her,” Maria Arely Portillo-Amaya said after the verdict was read. “Because if she was here right now she would be making us all laugh.”

“I’m very thankful that justice is going to be served because my sister didn’t deserve what happened to her.” Maria Arely Portillo-Amaya

Another sister, Norma Portillo-Amaya, talked about growing up with Maria, each having to play the role of mother for one another at times. This life sentence won’t bring her sister back, but neither will Navarrete-Portillo be able to hurt anyone else, said Norma Portillo-Amaya.



Prosecutors had declined to seek the death penalty in the case, and Navarrete-Portillo was immediately sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole as required by state law. The jury also convicted him of child abuse; his then-6-year-old son was in the room where the killing occurred.

In closing arguments Wednesday morning, Assistant District Attorney Anne Norrdin said the circumstances of the killing without question showed deliberation.

Public Defender Elise Myer told the jury: “I’m going to be very clear; we’re asking you to find him guilty,” but of the lesser charge of second-degree murder.

Myer and Public Defender Molly Owens have said that “intoxication and provocation overcame reason” when the defendant took a machete to his wife’s face.

The public defenders have argued that Navarrete-Portillo was intoxicated past the point of being able to form the requisite mental state for premeditation or intent. He and his wife had been drinking for the day and night leading up to the killing.

The defendant also testified Monday that his wife provoked him with “words that destroyed me.” He testified that Portillo-Amaya said that another man she’d been seeing was a better lover than her husband and that he was useless.

Navarrete-Portillo said he’d punched his wife in the face before the killing. He believed she made these statements about the other man because she was mad that he hit her.

The defense repeated several statements Navarrete-Portillo later made describing the attack as something outside of his control.

“When my head reacted, I had already done it,” he had said. “When it happened, I kind of lost my mind.”

They describe killing as a “lightning quick” attack, something he did without thinking.

This case has always been about second-degree murder, and the prosecution has tried to fit it in the box of first-degree murder, said Myer. But it doesn’t fit, she said.

She argued that Navarrete-Portillo never intended to kill his wife, nor did he ever deliberate on killing her.

The prosecution used statements he made to investigators many hours after the killing to demonstrate that he had a culpable mental state, she said. But those conversations “are not a gauge of his intoxication at the time of death.”

When you’re intoxicated, it’s not about what behaviors you display physically; it’s about what’s happening inside your brain, what’s in your blood and what’s happening chemically, said Myer.

In a first-degree murder case, the jury can consider whether intoxication affected the defendant’s ability to form the “requisite mental state” – as in the ability to commit a homicide with intent and after deliberation.

“We don’t dispute that alcohol was involved,” said Norrdin. But the prosecution did dispute that it prevented the defendant from forming a culpable mental state.

The defendant is also arguing that Portillo-Amaya deserved a machete to the face in part because she provoked him and stirred his passions, said Norrdin.

The defendant punching her in the face and her responding that “you’re not a good lay” is not justification for a sudden heat of passion, said Deputy District Attorney Matthew Barrett.

You can’t hit your wife and cause the provocation that you end up using as your defense for second-degree murder, he said.

In a case like this, usually only two people truly know what happened: the victim and the perpetrator, said Norrdin. When the victim is dead, the attacker knows he can weave whatever tale he wants, because no one can contradict his story, she said.

Navarrete-Portillo has been looking to blame alcohol or the victim throughout this case, said Norrdin.

“My people did a great job and worked hard on this case, though it’s a sad situation,” said District Attorney Sherry Caloia. “We filed this case as a first-degree murder, and we firmly believed that was the appropriate charge.

“In this kind of case there are no winners; this is no cause for celebration,” said Caloia.

Just before sentencing, Barrett said, “A life was lost, taken far too early in a despicable and violent way. And another life will spend the rest of its days in the department of corrections.”

Barrett said the prosecutors were more than satisfied that the jury agreed with their view of the evidence. “We look forward to hearing the judge impose that sentence of life without the possibility of parole.”

Portillo Amaya is no more on this earth because Navarrete-Portillo took her life over a year ago, Judge James Boyd before announcing the sentence. “Her life is gone. Her absence will have impacts indefinitely into the future for (those who loved her) and have her no more except in their hearts.”

When the jury returned, when Boyd read the guilty verdicts, when the victim’s sisters told the court that Maria Carminda Portillo-Amaya hadn’t deserved to be brutally murdered, and when the judge finally handed down a life sentence, Navarrete-Portillo remained still and without reaction.


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