A Superior Court Judge overturned Gov. Gavin Newsom’s petition to deny Jesus Cecena parol for fatally shooting San Diego Police Officer Archie Buggs over four decades ago during a traffic stop.
Jesus Cecena was convicted of fatally shooting Officer Archie Buggs, 30, four times during a traffic stop on Nov. 4, 1978, in the Skyline neighborhood. Officer Buggs, who was one of the first African American police officers in San Diego, pulled over Cecena, who was 17 at the time, for speeding.
Cecena was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. His sentence was reduced in 1982 to seven-year-to-life terms because he was underage at the time of the shooting.
In California, sentences of prisoners serving life are reviewed automatically by the governor, who holds the power to overturn the parole board's decision on parole grants. Cecena has been granted parole five times since 2014, but it has been reversed each time by California’s governor.
Gov. Gavin Newsom most recently reversed the parole board's decision in 2020.
Newsom said he was denying parole because Cecena “fails to fully understand the causative factors that led him to murder officer Buggs," and because Cecena had not fully come to acknowledge that the murder was “gang-motivated and not just gang-related.”
"Mr. Cecena still is unwilling to acknowledge the underlying or causative factors that are in evidence, specifically that he belonged to a gang where killing a peace officer was seen as an ultimate goal, that a more senior and respected gang member handed him a firearm so he could kill Officer Buggs, and that killing Officer Buggs was a way for Mr. Cecena to gain more respect and power within his gang. Mr. Cecena has additional work to do in this area before he can be safely released,” Newsom wrote in a three-page statement.
San Diego Superior Court Judge David Gill granted a petition last month filed by Cecena that challenged the governor's order. According to the San Diego County District Attorney's Office, which opposes Cecena's release, he could be released from custody sometime in the next month if the decision is not appealed.
“Cecena has refused to acknowledge both his true motivation for this horrific murder and the enhanced status he sought in his gang by committing this crime,'' District Attorney Summer Stephan said in a statement released Tuesday. “The Superior Court decision did not give weight to these important factors and consequently reached an erroneous conclusion. I am urging Gov. Newsom to authorize the Attorney General to appeal the court's decision based on the serious concerns about Cecena's suitability that the governor relied on reversing the grant of parole in his October 2020 letter.''
The DA's Office cited “more than 10 violation reports for misconduct while in prison, and alleged an “unstable social history” due to these violations.
“Without accepting full responsibility for the true nature of this crime, he continues to present a clear and unacceptable danger to our community. It is important to pause on the gravity of this case that fortunately remains a rare occurrence where a police officer on duty, in uniform, and with a marked patrol car is shot and executed while he is on the ground,” Stephan said.
