The man convicted of killing Kristin Smart, who vanished from a California college campus more than 25 years ago, was scheduled to be sentenced Friday for her murder.
Paul Flores could face 25 years to life in state prison. However, the judge was first expected to consider defense motions to toss out Flores’ conviction, acquit him and order a new trial.
Smart, 19, disappeared from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo on the state’s scenic central coast over Memorial Day weekend in 1996.
KRISTIN SMART TRIAL CLOSING ARGUMENTS: MURDER SUSPECT PAUL FLORES IS ‘GUILTY AS SIN,’ PROSECUTOR SAYS
Her remains have never been found, but she was declared legally dead in 2002.
Prosecutors maintained that Flores, now 46, killed Smart during an attempted rape on May 25, 1996, in his dorm room at the university, where both were first-year students. He was the last person seen with Smart as he walked her home from an off-campus party.
Flores was arrested in 2021 along with his father, who was accused of helping to hide Smart’s body.
The trial was held in Salinas, in Monterey County, about 110 miles north of San Luis Obispo, after the defense argued that the case’s notoriety prevented Flores and his father from receiving a fair trial in their own county.
A jury found Flores guilty of first-degree murder in October. A separate jury acquitted Ruben Flores, 81, of being an accessory.
At Paul Flores’ trial, defense attorney Robert Sanger tried to pin the killing on someone else. Sanger noted that Scott Peterson, who was later convicted at a sensational trial of murdering his pregnant wife and the fetus she was carrying, was also a student at the campus about 200 miles up the coast from Los Angeles.
Sanger filed motions on Feb. 24 in Monterey County Superior Court requesting that charges be dismissed and his client acquitted. One motion also seeks a new trial.
EXAMINING CALIFORNIA’S KRISTIN SMART TRIAL: THE ANATOMY OF A CASE WITH NO BODY
Sanger disputed forensic evidence…
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