CONVICTION UPHELD IN VALLEY MURDER.

Byline: Karen Maeshiro Staff Writer

LANCASTER - An appeals court has upheld the second-degree murder conviction of a Lancaster man for fatally beating a teenage neighbor on the head with a tequila bottle as the teen watched TV.

Gerald Callahan argued that the trial court erred by not allowing him to present evidence of his drunkenness as part of his defense, but the 2nd District Court of Appeal disagreed, and added that Callahan could justly have been convicted of first-degree murder based on the evidence.

``Appellant's expressions of anger at the victim, his statements that he wanted to get back at the victim and offers to beat the victim up, coupled with the circumstances and vicious manner of the killing, all support the jury's finding of malice aforethought,'' the ruling said. ``Indeed, the jury could well have found premeditation and deliberation for murder in the first degree upon this evidence.''

Callahan was sentenced in May 2004 to 16 years to life in prison for the January 2003 slaying of David Patrick Sanez, 19. Jurors acquitted Callahan of first-degree murder.

The motive appeared to be Sanez's intervention in a fight between Callahan and Sanez's roommate, prosecutors said. Sanez came to his roommate's aid, kicking Callahan in the face and breaking his nose before Callahan released the roommate, prosecutors said.

A psychologist testifying for the defense said Callahan has paranoid schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. A prosecution psychologist disagreed.

Sanez was found dead slumped on a couch on his apartment. Prosecutors said he had been hit on the head four times with a 4-pound glass bottle of tequila, causing multiple skull fractures. Sanez was hit so hard that blows to the right side of his head broke bones on the opposite side of his face, the ruling said.

Callahan contended that he was ``so intoxicated'' when he struck Sanez with the bottle that there was ``at least a reasonable doubt'' that he knew the natural consequence of his act was dangerous or that he acted deliberately with conscious disregard for life, the ruling said.

But the three-judge appellate panel cited a state law that says defendants can't be excused for their drunkenness: ``No act committed by a person while in a state of voluntary intoxication is less criminal by reason of his or her having been in that condition.''

The law was upheld by another state appellate court, and the principle was supported by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a Montana case.

``(T)he rule comports with and implements society's moral perception that one who has voluntarily impaired his own faculties should be responsible for the consequences,'' Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the U.S. Supreme Court ruling.