05/01/2023
Today’s meditation is persistence—never give up.
On Friday, my resentencing petition for Jesse Sebourn was granted, overturning his conviction for Voluntary Manslaughter with a gang enhancement. Jesse has completed over 10 years of a 21 year sentence, and on May 8 will be resentenced hopefully to credit time-served. Jesse will finally get to go home.
Jesse Sebourn’s case was the second trial of my career, before I was a lawyer, as a law clerk for Greg Bentley. A grand jury in Stanislaus County indicted Jesse and 8 other defendants, alleging a conspiracy to commit first degree murder for the benefit of a criminal street gang. After a trial that ran from August of 2014-January 2015, and weeks of deliberations, the jury deadlocked and a mistrial was declared. As to Jesse, the split was 6-6.
The prosecution had always figured Jesse wrong. They accused him of being the “ring-leader,” a “shot caller.” But Jesse wasn’t even a gang member, and he wasn’t capable of orchestrating a complicated plot for revenge or commanding his friends to act on his behalf. Jesse was a 22 year old kid with developmental disabilities who got jumped when he was crossing out gang graffiti on February 14, 2013. Hours later, while Jesse was a mile and a half away trying to take his girlfriend out for Valentine’s Day, Erick Gomez was attacked and killed by others. Jesse wasn’t there, and we proved it at trial.
But the prosecution lined everybody up for a second trial, and we couldn’t be there to represent Jesse the second time. I still wasn’t a lawyer yet. Jesse’s appointed counsel pled him to voluntary manslaughter with a gang enhancement and a 21 year sentence—a package deal that gave Jesse the longest sentence of all of his co-defendants. That sentence was perhaps the greatest injustice I have ever seen, and I could only watch helplessly as it happened.
Then, in 2018, the law of felony murder was changed, eliminating the theory of law that the prosecution had charged Jesse with. I thought to myself that the law had been rewritten just for Jesse. So I filed a petition for resentencing for Jesse a little over a month after the new law took effect. It was denied. We appealed. And while the appeal was pending, in 2022, the law changed again on exactly the issue that Jesse’s petition was denied on, clarifying that Jesse should have been granted relief. I thought to myself again that the law had been rewritten just for Jesse. Jesse’s petition was remanded to the trial court and we began litigating a hearing for resentencing.
On Friday last week, April 28, we finally got our day in court. Jesse’s original trial counsel Gregory Bentley drafted the 57 page case brief that I argued. We also had the assistance of a fantastic intern, Rosa Valles.This team was instrumental.
And at that hearing, after fighting for Jesse for 10 years, we finally won. We undid Jesse’s unjust conviction and sentence. Come May 8, Jesse will be re-sentenced and I hope to bring him home.
By Brinda Kalita MODESTO, CA - A man’s PC § 1170.5 petition requesting resentencing was approved here Friday in Stanislaus County Superior Court, leading
