‘A man enraged’: San Carlos beheading case goes to jury after erratic trial

The court hearings reached a bizarre point when Jose Rafael Solano Landaeta went silent halfway through his own testimony and refused to come to court afterward.

REDWOOD CITY — A grisly murder case in which a man was charged with hacking his child’s mother to death with a sword — virtually beheading her — is now in the hands of a jury, following a bizarre trial that reached a fever pitch when the defendant abruptly refused to speak halfway through his own testimony.

As he has done since that bizarre court sequence Monday, 34-year-old Jose Rafael Solano Landaeta refused to leave his jail cell and appear in court Friday morning for closing arguments in his murder trial, which charges him with killing 27-year-old Karina Castro on a San Carlos street last year.

But he changed course in the afternoon and appeared in court, wearing a dark suit as he watched his attorney while clasping his hands on a desk and occasionally whispering to his legal team.

The trial was notable in some ways because Solano’s culpability was never in dispute. Eyewitnesses recounted watching the slaying unfold the afternoon of Sept. 8, 2022 in the middle of Laurel Street, not far from where Castro lived. They testified they were walking by when they first saw Solano and Castro argue, then watched in horror as Solano retrieved a sword from his car and brutally attacked Castro.

In his closing arguments, prosecutor Josh Stauffer argued that Solano was driven to kill Castro, with whom the defendant shared a young daughter, out of vengeance as their toxic relationship devolved into social media and text message threats and insults. He called Solano’s shutting down in court a ruse to convince jurors he was so mentally disturbed that he deserved their leniency.

“It was an act, a performance, a farce,” Stauffer said Friday, before outlining how a multitude of court-appointed doctors testified they believed Solano was feigning mental-health lapses. “You saw the defendant literally close his eyes and put his head down to hide from questions … to hide from justice.”

Stauffer further laid out testimony from the medical experts that Solano’s claim of psychotic bouts — he has previously been described as being afflicted with paranoid schizophrenia — were inconsistent with prevailing diagnoses and symptoms, and that his episodes were “audience dependent,” particularly when he was in front of the trial jury.

“This has nothing to do with mental health, this is an act of domestic violence,” Stauffer said. “This is an act of first-degree murder.”

Defense arguments have evolved since Solano was arrested and charged last year. After seeking to have the court assess his mental competency — he was ultimately deemed fit for trial — Solano’s attorneys dropped an insanity defense in favor of one centered on “imperfect self-defense.”

That trial theory depended largely on a contention that Castro had attacked Solano with a small knife during the fatal confrontation and that she had previously made threatening comments against him and his family.

Defense attorney Robert Cummings did not deny the brutality of the killing, but said Solano was responding to a genuine threat and that his actions were intensified by his mental illness and being off his psychiatric medications at the time.

“That belief at that point in time is what justified Mr. Solano in his actions,” Cummings said Friday in asking jurors to find for an acquittal or a lesser manslaughter conviction. “His mind is not like yours and mine. It is stricken with schizophrenia. He has a sick mind.”

Later, Cummings bolstered the point: “Whether these threats are valid threats … what matters is what’s going on in his mind.”

That defense theory was pitted against the prosecution’s stance that the killing was a vengeful act foretold by phone calls — before and after the killing — and text messages Solano sent in which he said things like Castro needed to be “smoked” and “86’d.”

Cummings scrutinized eyewitness testimony and inconsistencies in their telling of the direction of a wounded and bleeding Castro’s flight from Solano, as well as a blood drop and small cut on Castro’s left index finger that Cummings argued was from her trying to stab his client.

Stauffer emphasized that a knife was never recovered by police, and that even if Castro had a knife, once Solano nearly hacked off her arm with a single sword strike, the need for self defense ceased.

Stauffer added that the eyewitnesses’ trauma could have affected their recollection, and that nothing could negate the vicious killing they saw, of Solano hacking at a prone Castro’s neck area “eight to 10 times.”

For half a court session Monday, Solano spoke in his defense, telling Cummings he had little to no memory of the encounter and recalled how he felt paranoid, but lucid enough to return to the crime scene and tell police that Castro tried to kill him.

During the few minutes the prosecution had to cross-examine him, Solano denied recognizing a photo of Castro, with whom he shared an infant daughter, and also denied killing her. Solano later went silent and did not acknowledge questions from either the prosecutor or the judge, instead staring down and appearing catatonic.

Solano refused to appear in court again until Friday.

After Solano’s silence, the prosecution called to the stand a court bailiff as well as medical staff at the Maguire Correctional Facility. They testified that prior to trial, Solano had not exhibited symptoms of mental illness and that he deliberately stopped taking his medication. A doctor with correctional health testified Solano was likely “malingering,” or feigning illness.

“This isn’t self defense. This was a man enraged,” Stauffer said at the end of his remarks. “He brutally murdered Ms. Castro, brutally murdered her, and then he played games with you.”