Killer Drops Insanity Plea, Hopes for Lighter Sentence

A 22-year-old Oceanside man who murdered his supervisor during a morning coffee break dropped his insanity plea Thursday in hopes of receiving a lighter sentence.

A jury convicted Jose Luis Maldonado of murder in June. The same jury hung, 11 to 1, in July in favor of finding Maldonado sane at the time of the killing, and a retrial had been set for next week.

Maldonado approached his boss, Juan Lopez, in the parking lot of the San Marcos industrial firm where they both worked and, without saying a word, shot him twice in the chest. He then fired at another of his supervisors before returning to Lopez’s still body and shooting him twice more in the back of the head.

Thursday’s change of plea in front of Vista Superior Court Judge Thomas J. Whelan makes a retrial unnecessary, and Maldonado will be sentenced Sept. 11. He could receive as long as 34 years in prison.

“It was a tactical decision,” public defender John Jimenez said of the change of plea. “We may be able to get certain sentencing considerations from the court and the prosecution if we were to proceed in this way.”

Both Jimenez and Deputy Dist. Atty. Greg Walden insisted that no agreement had been made on a lenient sentence in exchange for withdrawing the insanity plea. Walden said that “only time will tell” if Maldonado receives a lesser prison term.

The sentencing is primarily at Whelan’s discretion, Walden said, and “I will simply ask the judge to hand down a sentence that he feels is appropriate.”

At sentencing, Jimenez will request that Maldonado be sent to the California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo, where he could receive psychiatric treatment.

During the sanity phase of the trial, the prosecution and defense each presented two experts who testified about Maldonado’s mental state.

Maldonado had told detectives that voices in his head urged him to gun down Rodriguez and fire at another of his supervisors, Adrian Flores. He also told a psychiatrist that he had seen horns growing from Rodriguez’s head and that he saw Martians.

After the jury hung, another court-appointed expert evaluated Maldonado and found that he was sane during the murder, Jimenez said, but that he was “psychotic to a certain degree.”

The psychiatrist’s evaluation, combined with the 11-1 vote against his client, led to the withdrawal of the insanity plea, Jimenez said.

“Realistically, the odds were not looking good,” he said.