The California Supreme Court has affirmed the death penalty given to a Laguna Hills man who was convicted of kidnapping, sexually assaulting and murdering a 23-year-old Newport Beach woman in 1991, and then keeping her handcuffed body in a freezer for three years as a trophy.

In a unanimous decision published on Thursday, the Supreme Court found that John Famalaro, now 60, received a fair trial in Orange County in 1997 for the murder of Denise Huber, who was abducted when her car broke down on the Corona del Mar 73 Freeway, late at night on June 23, 1991.

Orange County Deputy District Attorney Christopher Evans argued during Famalaro's headline-making trial in 1997 that Famalaro took Huber to a warehouse in Laguna Hills, where he sexually assaulted her and bludgeoned her to death.

Famalaro then stored the nude, battered and handcuffed body in a freezer he bought a few days after the slaying, and kept it for three years while Huber's parents and friends frantically searched for her.

His scheme was uncovered in July 1994 when sheriff's deputies in Yavapai County, Ariz., investigated a report of a stolen rental truck, and came across the freezer in the back of the truck, powered by an extension cord from the small house where Famalaro was living.

Deputies cut through a padlock on the freezer and three layers of plastic trash bags before they found a naked human body, frozen solid in a fetal position with the hands secured behind the back with metal handcuffs. It was Denise Huber.

Famalaro's arrest and subsequent trial drew intense media attention as he was extradited from Arizona and tried in Orange County. His trial was covered by newspapers, radio station and television stations. It became a true crime book, "Cold Storage," written by Garden Grove author Dan Lasseter. And it was listed by The Orange County Register in 2009 as one of the most notorious cases in county history.

Famalaro's appellate court attorneys claimed that he was denied a fair trial in part because of that media attention. They argued that his trial should have been moved out of Orange County because of prejudicial pre-trial publicity that allegedly contaminated the jury pool.

But the Supreme Court, in a 56-page decision authored by Justice Joyce Kennard, disagreed. They found that Orange County Superior Court Judge John J. Ryan properly conducted the jury selection process properly and qualified a jury that was fair and unbiased.

"True, the jury selection process indicated that defendant's case was well known in Orange County, and that there was considerable community sentiment that he was guilty of murdering Denise and should be executed for that crime," Kennard wrote. "Here, our independent review … shows that the selection process resulted in a panel of jurors untainted by the publicity surrounding this case, and we see no evidence that any of them held biases that the selection process failed to detect."

The decision to affirm Famalaro's death sentence does not mean that his potential execution is imminent in California, where there is an informal moratorium on capital punishment while lawyers battle the legality of lethal injection and as a means of execution.

His defense team will also now take their appeals to the Supreme Court, a process that could take years to resolve.

In the meanwhile, Famalaro will remain on death row at San Quentin prison, one of 58 killers from Orange County sentenced to death

Contact the writer: lwrlborn@ocregister.com or 714-834-3784