They batted around the word "obvious" outside the courtroom Tuesday – as in, there was no question about the verdict that took very little time for a Sacramento jury to reach in finding Juan Carlos Orozco guilty in the Aug. 26, 2010, torture-and-robbery murder of Galen Joseph May.
Orozco, a meth user whose girlfriend had just kicked him out of their house, went upstairs in the minutes after his ejection to push into May's place in the North Country Vista Apartments on Watt Avenue in Antelope. It was 1 o'clock in the morning, and May, 69, a retired thoroughbred trainer who in his day helped prepare three horses for the Kentucky Derby, had just arrived home after a quick stop at a nearby Circle K.
Looking for fast money, Orozco tied up May hand and foot with electric cords. He fastened two plastic bags over his head. He retrieved a flat-headed screwdriver and poked 22 holes in May's face, neck and chest in an apparent attempt to get him to give up the code to his ATM card. When May didn't, he wrapped a belt around May's neck and cinched it as tight as he could.
Along with the asphyxiation murder, jurors found the special-circumstance allegations that Orozco killed for robbery and inflicted torture to be true. Those findings qualify Orozco for the no-parole life term.
"I'm glad the jury rendered the right decision," said Will May, of Seattle, the victim's brother. Orozco "obviously was guilty, and the only thing that surprised me was how quick the decision was. But when things are obvious, you make a quick decision."
The jury forewoman, who did not give her name, said of the case, "The evidence was pretty obvious."
Orozco last week took the witness stand in his own defense. He testified that he found the keys to May's car in the parking lot and was only returning them, despite it being past midnight, when he looked inside and saw that the man was dead. Then he stole May's car, used May's ATM card for a couple of purchases and took off for Salinas and then Delano, where he was arrested a week after the killing.
Case in point: the dinner I recently had with a group of five compatriots, all of us upwardly mobile and overly educated. Throughout the meal, we’d been mildly boasting about our accomplishments and fawning over each other’s talents. By the time we indulged in some chocolate mousse, everyone was riding pretty high on the hog.
But when the $116.37 check arrived, the night’s buoyancy disappeared. We spent no fewer than 15 minutes scribbling and squabbling, trying to sort out what each of us owed for the night’s vittles. We eventually paid appropriate amounts and acted like nothing happened, but the shame was palpable.
How is paying a group check still a problem in 2013? How can it be that this generation of tech-savvy, smartphone-wielding early adopters still boggles at the end of a meal?
Two diners is fine, possibly even three, but if the table’s population gets any bigger, it’s like a social collapse in a rat colony: chaos unfolds as we all turn on one another. There’s the collective “daaaaamn” at the total price, there’s the failed attempt to split the amount evenly, there are the passive-aggressive reminders that so-and-so had one more drink than everyone else, there’s the silent groan of frustration when a couple announces that they’ll be paying as a unit, and so on. Pity the poor server, who has to hear a three-minute explanation of what to do: “Put $17.30 on this credit card, $4.75 on this one-- oh crap, we did the math wrong; give us a moment…”
There are check-splitting apps that try to ease that numerical burden. Billr, Divided, Check Split, Divvy -- they all help sort out group bills. Divvy even lets you enter your data simply by taking a photo of the check. But that leaves the payment problem untouched: even if a program is doing all the math, there will still be a mélange of debit cards, credit cards, and unbroken $20 bills to sort through. These apps are a great start, and we should all download them, but there’s still one more step we all need to take. And it’s astoundingly low-tech.
More often than not, what truly sinks these payment situations is the lack of a common medium of exchange. When cards mix with cash, the amount of necessary calculations skyrockets and errors become harder to fix. Each card becomes its own bill, with a charged amount separate from the other cards and the pooled cash. Errors become harder to fix -- when we inevitably over- or underpay, we end up doing a second round of payments to one another. Or, worse, we just promise to pay each other back later.
But with the magic of cash, everything becomes easier. Pop the meal into one of the check-splitting apps, then have everyone shell out the exact amounts owed. Easy peasy. Don’t let anyone get away with that lamest of excuses: “I only have a twenty.” Force anyone who says that to go to the register and get the $20 bill broken -- and to get an individual dollar broken so that he or she can have exact change. It costs nothing more than a walk from one’s seat.
Even if you don’t believe in collective action, wielding cash and a check-splitting app can still improve your own group-dining experience. Just whip your phone out, quickly calculate what everyone owes, pay your amount and then let the rest of the rats fight it out over their plastic.
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