Jose “Joe” Luis Saenz, now 49, is serving two consecutive life prison terms without the possibility of parole.
for the Aug. 5, 1998, killing of Sigreda Fernandez, the mother of the defendant’s young daughter, and the Oct. 5, 2008, killing of Oscar Torres in a crime that was caught on video.
At Saenz’s sentencing in January 2023, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler told Saenz that he was as “cold-blooded” a killer as he had ever come across in four decades on the bench and 10 years as a defense attorney.Saenz repeatedly interrupted the judge throughout the hearing and told the judge, “I’m innocent.”
Jurors deadlocked on two additional murder charges against Saenz, an alleged gang member, involving the July 25, 1998, killings of rival gang members Josue Hernandez and Leonardo Ponce, who were killed on Los Angeles’ Eastside in what authorities believe was payback for an attack on an associate. The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office opted against seeking a retrial on those counts.
The prosecutor told jurors during the trial that police had never stopped looking for Saenz, who was featured on billboards across Los Angeles, on the local news and on the TV show “America’s Most Wanted,” and who was eventually brought back from Mexico in 2012 by a fugitive task force after being found there, where he had been living under a different name.
Prosecutors opted under prior Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey’s administration not to seek the death penalty against Saenz.
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