Nunez said her client thought the fight was over but he had to “defend himself” and do a “leg sweep” when Smith came at him wielding a weapon.
“What we have here is a case of self-defense,” she told jurors, noting that Smith was 6-foot-6 and 212 pounds, while Creech was smaller at 6-foot-1, 195 pounds with “a little bit of a beer gut.”
She acknowledged that her client had made “errors in judgment” by trying to conceal the body of the 57-year-old former UCLA basketball player, who was on the 1975 NCAA-winning basketball team under Coach John Wooden and had worked for 20th Century Fox for 18 years. Smith’s remains were discovered after hikers came upon a shallow grave in the Antelope Valley about 2 1/2 years later.