01 December 2016 :

Manuel Sepulveda is off death row and now serving life in prison without parole, following a new sentence imposed Tuesday as the result of a Monroe County Court ruling on Sepulveda's challenge to his trial's penalty phase. A jury in 2002 convicted Sepulveda, 37, Hispanic, of 1st-degree murder and conspiracy to murder in the 2001 deaths of John Mendez, 19, and Ricardo Lopez Jr., 20, at the home of Daniel Heleva, 55, who was convicted as an accomplice and is serving life without parole. After convicting Sepulveda in the trial phase of 1st-degree murder, the jury had to decide in the penalty phase whether to sentence him to death or life without parole, the only 2 penalties for 1st-degree murder convictions. The jury chose death and on Jan. 27, 2003 a judge confirmed. In 2006, several years after his conviction, Sepulveda filed a Post-Conviction Relief Act motion, seeking ultimately a new trial, on grounds that mitigating factors weren't available to or raised by his defense at trial. The mitigating factors Sepulveda cited include a traumatic childhood leading to drug addiction, cognitive disabilities as an adult and having no criminal record prior to the murders. His PCRA motion was denied in Monroe County Court, appealed up to state Supreme Court and remanded back to Monroe County for a hearing on grounds that Sepulveda was raising valid issues. After the case was remanded back to this county, Sepulveda's defense attorney at the time, who was different from the attorney who had represented him at trial, became aware of an additional mitigating factor in testimony not elicited from Heleva's wife, Robyn Otto, at trial. The defense then requested a hearing to have Otto testify to what she hadn't been called to testify about at trial. Otto testified at the April 2015 hearing that Sepulveda was like an uncle to her and Heleva's children, who were ages 7 and 5 at the time of the murders. Her testimony indicated Sepulveda was protecting the children when killing Lopez and Mendez, who had threatened to burn the house down with Otto and the children inside. After hearing this testimony, Mendez's angry relatives told news media Otto was lying and that Mendez, not Sepulveda, was the one who looked out for the children. Sepulveda's defense argued the jury had been prejudiced in the trial's penalty phase. Had the jury been allowed to hear Otto's testimony at trial, there's a fair chance at least 1 juror would have voted to sentence Sepulveda to life without parole, as opposed to death, the defense said. And that 1 juror's dissenting vote was all it would've taken to affect the jury's decision, which must be unanimous. Monroe County President Judge Margherita Patti-Worthington later issued a ruling in favor of Sepulveda's PCRA motion, saying the jury had indeed been prejudiced in the trial's penalty phase. In light of the judge's ruling, Sepulveda's sentence was changed Tuesday from death to life without parole. Sepulveda, who indicated he views this sentence as equally unjust, has the right to appeal.