COLUSA, CA (MPG) – Although no longer a youth, 43-year-old Paulino Gabriel Cervantes, of Williams, will ask the Colusa County Superior Court to consider his age and immaturity when he tried to kill his girlfriend as a factor for his possible release from state prison.
Cervantes was 20 years old when he was given a life sentence plus four years – with the possibility of parole – after a Colusa County Jury convicted him of attempted willful deliberate premeditated murder, along with 11 special sentencing enhancements, related to stabbing Sandra Montejano, the mother of his child.
Montejano was kidnapped at knife point from a Colusa parking lot on Oct. 16, 2001, and stabbed multiple times in the stomach, back, chest, and arm when she attempted to escape just outside of town.
Cervantes, who has served 23 years in High Desert State Prison for the crime, voluntarily waived previous parole suitability hearings, but a California prison reform law now allows violent offenders with lengthy and enhanced sentences, who were under the age of 26 when they committed their crimes, to have the trial court evidence their age and other mitigating factors, such as upbringing and emotional state at the time of the crime, which must now be given great weight before a judge can impose a long-term sentence in state prison for a young offender.
In addition to attempted murder, Cervantes was convicted on multiple enhancements, including carjacking, use of a deadly weapon, inflicting corporal injury to a child’s parent, domestic violence, and causing great bodily injury, each carrying with it a maximum sentence.
Cervantes’ case is scheduled in Colusa County Superior Court on Nov. 20 for the setting of a Franklin Hearing, a process for the court to document mitigating evidence, which will then be used by the parole board to decide if Cervantes should be released from prison after he serves 25 years.
A Franklin Hearing is a precondition of the formal parole hearing, in which the parole board would also consider Cervantes’ prison disciplinary records and risk assessment, officials said.
Cervantes’ state parole suitability hearing is tentatively scheduled for June 2025.