A man accused of sending multiple threatening messages to an Orange County Superior Court judge testified Wednesday in federal court in Santa Ana that the emails and social media postings were meant to be jokes.<\/p>\n
Byrom Zuniga Sanchez, 33, formerly of Laguna Niguel, is on trial for two counts of threats by interstate and foreign communication for allegedly sending the threats after a contentious custody dispute in Family Law court over his then-5-year-old son. Zuniga Sanchez, who is acting as his own attorney, questioned himself in his testimony.<\/p>\n
Zuniga Sanchez\u2019s elliptical ramblings in his testimony revolved around explaining the violent and crude words in his messages to Orange County Superior Court Judge Sandy Leal\u2019s courtroom. He played videos of himself insulting her with curses as well as a music video he sent to the judge that he said he found \u201chilarious.\u201d<\/p>\n
To make his case that he was spending much of his time in 2023 writing \u201ccomedy,\u201d he said his Instagram\u2019s bio included that he did \u201cinterior painting and remodeling, specializing in attics.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a joke for those who understand I\u2019m referencing a uterus,\u201d Zuniga Sanchez said of specializing in attics. \u201cTo me, that is hilarious.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the time he was accused of sending the threats in mid-2023, \u201cThe majority of my day was working on comedy. I was working on comedy skits for 10 or 20 different characters.\u201d<\/p>\n
He asked himself how much of that time did he spend \u201cbrooding\u201d over his custody case and he replied, \u201cReally none of my time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zuniga Sanchez said that some of his Instagram posts were the kind that \u201cself-deletes after 24 hours\u2026 You\u2019ve got to be there at the right time to laugh along.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the posts refers to \u201cMoe the Muslim,\u201d a character that he said was \u201cplaying off of Muslim stereotypes.\u201d<\/p>\n
He noted one of his favorite jokes to post on social media was, \u201cWhat is the square root of your family tree in Alabama \u2014 your first cousin.\u201d<\/p>\n
He asked himself if he believed that he was \u201cgenuinely\u201d engaged in \u201clawful exercising of his First Amendment rights,\u201d and he replied, \u201cYes\u2026 I\u2019m not an attorney, but to the best of my knowledge I was within my First Amendment rights.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zuniga Sanchez said that his July email asking if Friday the 13th in October \u201cworks for you\u201d for an active shooter attack was not serious.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, really, July to October? That gives so much time for people to find me,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not rational to consider this as serious.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also sought to explain one alleged threat in which he refers to himself as a gorilla, saying that \u201cwe area really close to 90% of the DNA of gorillas.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said in the message, \u201cI am the gorilla and I will murder everything responsible for traumatizing my son. (Expletive) you and your abuse of laws, dirty whore.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt doesn\u2019t say every one,\u201d Zuniga Sanchez testified. \u201cIt says every thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
He testified, \u201cProbably the most dangerous thing I could do is hurt someone with my words.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the two years after he lost the custody case, Zuniga Sanchez said he was on a \u201cmission to wage war against corruption in Family Court.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said Family Court can do good and could \u201chave spared me an awful childhood,\u201d but he felt that it had failed him in his custody battle.<\/p>\n
Zuniga Sanchez also referred to the Second Amendment in his messages because, \u201cWe have the right to bear arms over a tyrannical government\u2026 I guess it means you have the right to stop the courts from abducting someone\u2019s child.\u201d<\/p>\n
He claimed to be \u201cearning about $600,000 a year\u201d and felt that the \u201csignificant portion of state and federal taxes\u201d he paid entitled him to tell Leal to resign from her job.<\/p>\n
He showed jurors a photo of himself crying that he sent to the judge.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only time I can cry is when I take mushrooms or LSD,\u201d he said, adding that all of the \u201ctrauma\u201d in his life has left him with difficulty with expressing feelings.<\/p>\n
In one of the messages he sent to the judge he said, \u201cYour suicide won\u2019t suffice.\u201d<\/p>\n
The emails he sent to the judge came as he was \u201cputting out an exorbitant amount of content\u2026 and these emails are a speck of dust being flicked out there,\u201d Zuniga Sanchez testified.<\/p>\n
The point of the outrageous language was \u201cto get adults to the table in family court to review\u201d his case, he said. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of like what do I have to do to get the FBI to call me, to get the police to call me.\u201d<\/p>\n
He acknowledged writing in one email, \u201cSandy, it is time to die. I am more committed to murdering you than to being present as a father\u2026 I am going to shove a funnel into you and piss in it.\u201d<\/p>\n
In one of the emails that he read aloud to the jury he referred to the mother of his son as a \u201cretarded bitch,\u201d and accused Leal of \u201cpsychologically terrorizing children to satisfy a man-hating agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n
He wrote that he will ensure that \u201cevery rotten heart in that courtroom dies in Mexican fashion.\u201d He added that the judge is \u201cweaker than a porn star\u2019s collapsed sphincter\u2026 You are the reason fathers will bear arms to protect their children.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also wrote, \u201cDo you have any last words before I lawfully kill you?\u201d<\/p>\n
He compared the judge to a \u201clight switch\u201d he can turn off and \u201ctear out of the wall.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his question to himself about the lengthy email he said, \u201cyour statements are a little all over the place\u201d and claimed in that in some places he declared \u201cyou\u2019re all going to die but also going to live a tormented life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zuniga Sanchez said \u201cThere was no proofreading. I just sent it off\u2026 I felt there were things that Judge Leal did not know, perhaps wasn\u2019t privy to\u2026 I don\u2019t know any litigants submitting filings with this much seasoning in their words. I felt my speech had been muted. I had been silenced. I felt that the attorneys were like go sit down and let the adults handle this. So there\u2019s no filter, a lot of flavor in this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zuniga Sanchez testified, \u201cSo much of this was parody\u2026 If I was finding something hilarious at someone else\u2019s expense then thanks for taking one for the team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zuniga Sanchez said he has \u201cnever been in\u201d Leal\u2019s courtroom \u201cever.\u201d The trial was \u201cour first time meeting,\u201d which prosecutors dispute.<\/p>\n
Under cross-examination from a prosecutor, Zuniga Sanchez denied that any of his emails contained threats. And when asked if he wrote the emails, he skirted around the question, pointing out that they had redactions and he could not claim full authorship.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s not a single threat communicated,\u201d he said. \u201cThere is not a single threat in here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Closing arguments are expected Thursday afternoon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man accused of sending multiple threatening messages to an Orange County Superior Court judge testified Wednesday in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[23690,163,165,164,2241,16047,46242,46243,46244,35763],"class_list":["post-80908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-accused","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-comedy","tag-judge","tag-statements","tag-testifies","tag-threatening","tag-were"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}