Another appeal has been filed by the man convicted of murdering Kristin Smart.
In 2023, a Monterey County jury found Paul Flores guilty of the Cal Poly freshman’s 1996 murder.
The latest brief filed Monday in the sixth division of the California Second Appellate District argues that Flores’ murder conviction should be overturned or reduced to second-degree murder based on alleged errors during trial.
Pleasant Hill-based attorney Solmon Wollack says that’s “due to the trial court’s erroneous admission of highly inflammatory uncharged offense evidence.” He argues that by the judge declining multiple times to remove a juror “who had lost her ability to remain neutral and abide by her oath,” the court violated Flores’s right to “the unanimous verdict of 12 impartial jurors.”
The brief also argues that with no evidence that Flores sexually assaulted Smart, the court “abused its discretion and violated due process by admitting two uncharged rape incidents.”
A third argument by Wollack in the brief is that the court committed “reversible error” by allowing testimony from a man who said that Smart “looked like she had been ‘roofied’ and to repeat hearsay he had read about in a newspaper article.”
The brief states the prosecution did not establish a foundation to support the witness' opinion about Smart’s possible roofie usage and his testimony “constituted inadmissible hearsay.”
It also states “reversible misconduct” was committed by the prosecution by “misusing” photos for character purposes.
The brief argues “there was no substantial evidence” that Flores committed any form of first-degree murder.
In all, seven points were made in the 75-document that included several other arguments, requesting Flores’ conviction be reversed and his case retried.
Many of the same arguments were also listed in Flores’ 2024 appeal.
Smart was 19 years old when she was last seen leaving a party and walking back to her dorm room. Flores remained a person of interest for years before criminal charges were filed in 2021 and he was tried for her murder and convicted less than two years later.
Following a nearly three-month trial, which was moved out of San Luis Obispo County to Monterey County, jurors found Flores, now 48, guilty of murdering Smart, although her body has never been found.
Flores was tried alongside his father, Ruben Flores, who was charged with accessory after the fact. Prosecutors alleged Ruben Flores helped his son cover up the crime.
Both men had separate juries. Ruben’s jurors returned a not-guilty verdict in his case.
Flores was sentenced in March 2023 to 25 years to life in prison after Monterey County Superior Court Judge Jennifer O’Keefe denied a motion requesting a new trial.
Flores is currently serving his sentence at Corcoran State Prison where he was moved after being attacked twice at Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga.
Wollack has not replied to KSBY’s requests for information.
Flores has been ordered to pay more than $346,000 in restitution to the Smart family.
