COLUSA COUNTY, CA (MPG) – Convicted cop killer Cuitlatuac “Tao” Rivera won’t be put to death in California anytime soon – if ever – but the 41-year-old inmate will remain a condemned man on death row.
Rivera appeared in Colusa County Superior Court on Oct. 12 to argue his sentence for killing Merced Police Officer Stephen Gene Gray in 2004 was unfair, given the retroactive changes in California’s criminal justice law that rejects the piling on of special enhancements.
In 2007, a Colusa County jury convicted Rivera, who was 21 at the time of the killing, of first-degree murder and a host of other charges, along with multiple special circumstances, including killing a police officer, that, under California law, warranted the death penalty.
Rivera was also convicted of several special enhancements that typically add additional time to a base sentence, but have been the target of criminal justice activists, who claim criminal enhancements have been applied unevenly and unfairly to people of color.
Rivera, who was a member of the Merced Gangster Crips, shot Gray, an African American gang task force officer, when Gray attempted to enforce a traffic stop on the vehicle Rivera was riding in with his girlfriend, who was driving, and the couple’s 2-year-old daughter.
Rivera, a felon on parole and the prime suspect in the shooting of two rival gang members a few days earlier, reportedly ran from the vehicle and turned to fire at Gray – hitting him twice above his protective vest and severing his spine, as the officer attempted to pursue Rivera on foot.
Gray, 34, was transported to the hospital where he was pronounced dead. Rivera escaped but was captured 17 days later.
While Colusa County Superior Court Judge Jeffrey A. Thompson dismissed the criminal enhancement (under SB 483) that Rivera had a prior prison sentence, and that he was a member of a criminal street gang (AB 333), the convictions that sent him to death row are not subject to recent changes in the law, Thompson said.
Rivera’s conviction and sentence for the first-degree murder of a peace officer, assault with a semi-automatic firearm, and possession of a firearm by a felon will stand, although Gov. Gavin Newsom put a moratorium on the state’s death penalty in 2019 and dismantled the death chamber at San Quentin, where Rivera is incarcerated.
Rivera never denied killing Gray, nor has he shown remorse for shooting a police officer and leaving him to die on the sidewalk, officials said.
Rivera, however, has maintained that he had not intended to kill the officer and blamed his defense for the outcome of the trial, although he is not likely to ever be released from prison if his death penalty is eventually overturned.
Gray was the first Merced Police Officer killed in the line of duty. He had served seven years with the department when he was killed, leaving behind a wife and three children.
Gray was the second peace officer in his family to die while in service to the public. Gray’s great-great-grandfather, City Marshal W.R. Shaver, was shot and killed in the line of duty on Aug. 14, 1905, while serving with the Boley Police Department, Oklahoma, according to Officer Down. H