A 49-year-old man who was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison in 2014 for sexually assaulting two boys he lived with in Anaheim should have been given a punishment of 15 to life in prison due to the way the prosecution filed the charges against him, the state Supreme Court ruled Monday.
Oscar Manuel Vaquera was convicted June 19, 2014, to two counts of lewd or lascivious acts with a minor younger than 14, sale or distribution of child pornography and two counts of possession of child pornography, all felonies. Jurors also found true sentence-enhancing allegations of lewd acts against more than one victim and substantial sexual conduct with a child.
He was sentenced to 25 to life in prison Sept. 26, 2014. He had been scheduled for review for parole in August of next year.
But in Monday’s ruling penned by Associate Justice Joshua P. Groban, the state Supreme Court sided with the defendant based on an argument focused on the way the prosecutor in the case filed the charges, which indicated he was seeking convictions for violations that would carry a punishment of 15 years to life.
Senior Deputy District Attorney Jess Rodriguez had initially filed a sentencing brief arguing for 15 to life for one of the counts, but a few days before the sentencing hearing, he changed his argument to advocate for 25 years to life, Groban wrote in the ruling.
After Vaquera was sentenced in 2014, Rodriguez told City News Service, “I wanted more than 25 years because he’s young enough to re-offend” if granted parole from prison.
Groban wrote that because the defense was not properly alerted to the possibility prosecutors would be seeking 25 to life, the defendant did not get a right to consider other options rather than going to trial, such as seeking a plea bargain. The confusion related to a 15-to-life punishment for multiple victims, but there’s a 25-to-life sentence for victims younger than 14.
The state’s high court rejected an argument from the Attorney General’s Office that lawmakers intended the One-Strike law to apply in cases involving victims younger than 14, and since that was the case with Vaquera, the defense should have understood that.
“The record shows that the same prosecutor filed the (case), conducted the trial, and submitted both sentencing briefs,” Groban wrote. “In the almost two years between when the prosecution filed (the case) and when it filed its second sentencing brief, it did not seek to amend the information or otherwise clarify it was seeking (25 years to life). … Then, in its initial sentencing brief, the prosecution affirmatively asked the court to impose a sentence of 15 years to life on count 2. … It was not until the prosecution filed its second sentencing brief, three months after the jury returned its verdict, that it first made clear its intent to seek 25 years to life.”
Vaquera molested the two victims between 2007 and early 2012.
Vaquera was living in a bedroom of an Anaheim house with others who rented there when he drilled a hole in his closet to secretly photograph and videotape the young boys as they used the restroom, Rodriguez said. The defendant molested an 11-year-old boy while he slept overnight at the home and also videotaped the attack, Rodriguez said.
The attack may have never come to light if the victim hadn’t seen the video while looking at the defendant’s computer the next morning, Rodriguez said. The victim had no memory of the attack.
Vaquera molested another boy when he was 9 and 11 years old, but that child was awake at the time, Rodriguez said.
Anaheim police who were investigating peer-to-peer file-sharing websites traced child pornography back to Vaquera’s computer, the prosecutor said.