INSANITY DEFENSE REJECTED BY JURY A.V. MAN KILLED HIS GRANDMOTHER.

Byline: KAREN MAESHIRO Staff Writer

LANCASTER -- A Lake Los Angeles man convicted of murdering his 78-year-old grandmother was found by a jury Wednesday to be legally sane at the time of the slaying.

Leonel Moncada, 26, had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, but an Antelope Valley Superior Court jury deliberated less than a day before finding otherwise.

``I'm relieved because I feel this defendant was a real danger if he had not been sent to prison,'' Deputy District Attorney Kelly Cromer said.

The jury's verdict brought to a conclusion the sanity phase of Moncada's trial. The same jury earlier had convicted him of first-degree murder in the May 2004 slaying of Elvira Diaz.

Moncada faces 25 years to life in prison for the murder charge when he is sentenced Feb. 7. Had he been found insane, he would have been committed to a mental hospital until his sanity was restored.

Diaz bled to death from a neck wound inflicted by a sharp object. The murder weapon was never found. Moncada testified that he had left the home he shared with Diaz to buy drugs and a gun and returned to find his grandmother dead, Cromer said.

Cromer said Moncada killed Diaz to avoid possibly going to prison. Four days before the killing, Moncada had been placed on felony probation for a February 2004 incident in which he attacked his uncle, breaking his nose and rupturing his eardrum, Cromer said.

Cromer said Moncada and Diaz had argued that morning, and he slapped her after she had slapped him.

``Any violation of probation could have resulted in him going to prison. Since he didn't want to go back into custody, as he had previously told his mother, it would seem the motive was he killed the grandmother to prevent her from reporting to authorities his assault on her as a probation violation,'' Cromer said.

Cromer said trial testimony indicated that there was a high probability that Moncada was using methamphetamine at the time of the killing, which would have impaired his judgment.

Moncada's attorney said that statistically, 4 percent of pleas are pleas of not guilty by reason of insanity, and of those, 1 percent are successful. In the sanity phase, the defense has the burden of proving insanity by the preponderance of the evidence.

``It's a very disfavored defense in California,'' attorney David Houchin said.

Sheriff's deputies said they received a 911 call just after 5 p.m. May 29 from a home in the 40600 block of 171st Street East from a man saying that he had just found his grandmother dead on the kitchen floor of the home they share with other relatives.

When deputies arrived, they found the woman dead and no apparent signs of burglary. Homicide investigators obtained a search warrant so they could search the rest of the home.

When the first deputies arrived, Moncada told them he thought drug dealers had committed the murder, Cromer said.

Later, while he sat in a patrol car, he told a homicide detective that he had killed Diaz, Cromer said.

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