according to the Washington State Court of Appeals’s unpublished opinion regarding his case. <\/a><\/p>\n“While the State argued in closing that Zghair ‘very well could have been the human being that pointed that shotgun,’ it never presented evidence that supports a reasonable inference that Zghair was the shooter,” the Court of Appeals’s opinion stated.<\/p>\n
No evidence permitted an inference connecting Zghair to the act of shooting, nor to the shotgun, with no physical evidence as a result of the weapon never having been found, the opinion stated. There was also no evidence that Zghair had a motive to shoot Ruiz-Perez as the two were “strangers” who had never met, according to documents.<\/p>\n
There was circumstantial evidence that Zghair was present at the scene of the crime, with his phone location data establishing his phone was in the vehicle connected to the shooting, with birdshot and blood recovered from the car. However, the Court of Appeals agreed with Zghair’s appeal that his “mere presence” at the scene could not establish his liability as an accomplice.<\/p>\n
“There is … no evidence from which to infer that he was the person who shot Ruiz-Perez. No rational juror could conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that … Zghair knew of a plan to shoot Ruiz-Perez … nor could a rational juror conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Zghair had information that would lead a reasonable person in his situation to believe he was assisting in the planning or commission of the crime charged,” the opinion stated.<\/p>\n
The Auburn Police Department declined to comment regarding the overturning of Zghair’s conviction.<\/p>\n
Representatives of the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office did not immediately respond to request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A jury had convicted Abbas Zghair in 2021 of second-degree murder in the 2019 fatal shooting <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1153,"featured_media":66056,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-66055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66055"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1153"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66055\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66055"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=66055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}