Worker Gets 28 Years to Life for Killing His Boss

A 23-year-old Oceanside man convicted of gunning down his supervisor in San Marcos was sentenced to 28 years to life in prison Friday after a tearful plea by his victim’s widow.

Jose Luis Maldonado stood unflinching as Juan Lopez’s wife begged the judge to sentence Maldonado to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

“You never gave my husband a chance to defend himself,” Martha Lopez said to Maldonado as he stood, chin tilted up and his hands folded in front of him. “You have evil within you. I pray to God that He will never ever again permit you and people like you to do any harm again.”

On Jan. 29, during a morning break, Maldonado approached his boss, Lopez, in the parking lot of the San Marcos industrial firm Professional Care Products Inc., where they worked. Without saying a word, Maldonado shot Lopez twice in the chest.

Maldonado then turned and fired at another of his supervisors before returning to Lopez’s still body and shooting him twice more in the back of the head.

Maldonado had originally pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity. Earlier this summer, a jury convicted him of first-degree murder in the death of Lopez and of assault with a firearm for shooting at the other supervisor, Adrian Flores.

But the same jury failed to determine if he was sane at the time, eventually deadlocking 11 to 1 in favor of sanity. A retrial had been scheduled, but Maldonado withdrew his insanity plea last month in the hope of receiving a lighter sentence.

On Friday, the change of plea seemed to have paid off as Judge Thomas J. Whelan sentenced Maldonado to the lightest of the sentences available to him. The most Maldonado could have received was 34 years to life in prison.

“It is clear that the defendant was suffering from a mental condition at the time,” Whelan said before handing down the sentence, which included a $500 fine for restitution to the Lopez family.

The report of the San Diego County Probation Department recommended that Maldonado, whose only previous run-in with the law had been a minor traffic violation, be sentenced to 30 years to life in prison.

In an interview with probation officers, Maldonado said he believed that God had told him to kill Lopez and that the victim was a devil.

Maldonado also told the interviewer that, after he shot and killed Lopez with the .22-caliber gun, “I was expecting (my co-workers) to clap and pat me on the back for getting rid of the victim.”

Lopez was the sole supporter of a wife and five children, including 9-year-old twins and three stepsons, according to the probation report. Before the shooting, the family had just purchased a home in Escondido. Since then, they have had to move in with Martha Lopez’s mother because they could no longer afford to pay the mortgage on the house, the report said.

Before Friday’s sentencing, Deputy Dist. Atty. Greg Walden, who prosecuted the case, gave the court only a brief statement.

“There is no other explanation than that, after years of extensive drug abuse, he could no longer control himself,” Walden said.

Public defender John Jimenez was equally succinct, suggesting that the fact that his client withdrew his insanity plea could be seen as a mitigating factor, and that Maldonado should be sent to the California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo, where he could receive psychiatric treatment while serving his sentence.

Including time off for good behavior, Maldonado is guaranteed to serve more than 17 years in prison before being eligible for parole.