FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) — Andrew Leon was back in court Thursday as prosecutors try to convince a jury he is guilty of first-degree murder, for the second time.<\/p>\n
“This is a murder case, and this is a first-degree murder case. The enhancements speak for themselves,” said prosecutor Kendall Reynolds.<\/p>\n
In their closing arguments Thursday, prosecutors doubled down on their claim that Leon demonstrated expressed malice.<\/p>\n
Reynolds says his actions show premeditation and deliberation, saying, “April.. she gets in his way, and pays the price for it. She paid with her life. She paid by way of 11 gunshot wounds.”<\/p>\n
The defense says Leon acted in self defense when he shot and killed April Diaz, his former girlfriend’s mother in Huron in 2023.<\/p>\n
Leon claims he saw Diaz coming at him with a knife.<\/p>\n
Public defender Brendan Bergh argues the shooting better reflects voluntary manslaughter.<\/p>\n
“Andrew told you exactly how he felt, and it’s up to you to determine if that was unreasonable,” Bergh told the jury.<\/p>\n
But prosecutors say police evidence shows otherwise, and that the knife never left Diaz’s pocket.<\/p>\n
“The gun doesn’t follow the person on its own. He’s following every time he’s pulling that trigger. In fact, he is moving locations. Is he making those decisions when he’s doing it? Of course he is,” Reynolds argued.<\/p>\n
Leon shot Diaz 11 times, firing until his gun jammed.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors believe his intent was clear.<\/p>\n
“All of those circumstances, of pulling a gun out, racking the gun, making sure it’s ready to fire, those are all decisions being made by Mr. Leon,” Reynolds said.<\/p>\n
The defense made one final plea to the jury.<\/p>\n
“The fact of the matter is, if Andrew had not acted the way he did, we would have a different outcome, and we know what that outcome would have been,” Bergh said.<\/p>\n
Jury deliberations are now underway.<\/p>\n
Seven men and five women will decide if Andrew Leon will become a convicted murderer.<\/p>\n
If found guilty of first-degree murder, Leon faces up to life in prison.<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2025 KFSN-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) — Andrew Leon was back in court Thursday as prosecutors try to convince a jury…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9250,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[8903,112,114,113,8902,294],"class_list":{"0":"post-9249","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fresno","8":"tag-8903","9":"tag-fresno","10":"tag-fresno-headlines","11":"tag-fresno-news","12":"tag-jury-deciding-the-fate-of-andrew-leon-as-second-trial-comes-to-a-close","13":"tag-timely"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9249","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=9249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}