An appeals court has reversed the sentence and guilty plea of a National City man who admitted stabbing his estranged wife to death in 2010, citing judicial errors after the defendant acted as his own lawyer.
The 4th District Court of Appeals struck down the guilty plea of Armando Gabriel Perez, now 43, to first-degree murder in the Oct. 12, 2010 slaying of Diana Gonzalez, 19, in a San Diego City College bathroom. He also had pleaded guilty to the special circumstance of lying in wait, and that is stricken as well.
The court sent Perez’s case back to San Diego Superior Court for trial. The 29-page opinion said Perez, who was acting as his own attorney, should not have been allowed to plead guilty without a competent attorney acting on his behalf.
Perez was sentenced by Judge Charles Rogers to life in prison without the possibility of parole plus one year consecutively on Jan. 16, 2015. The appeals court held that no one could act as their own attorney and plead guilty to first-degree murder with special circumstances in which a sentence of life without parole is imposed.
Perez had problems with many of his attorneys and he successfully persuaded Rogers to act as his own attorney despite warnings that he should not do it. The opinion said Perez’s education did not go beyond the 11th grade.
Perez had a history of drama at many of his court hearings and even at his arraignment in 2012 he yelled “I’m guilty” when an attorney tried to enter a not guilty plea for him.
Perez remains an inmate at the Salinas Valley State Prison in Soledad in Monterey County, said an employee at the state Department of Corrections on Monday. Perez will eventually be transferred to San Diego for trial, but there is no future court date yet set.
Diana Gonzalez also lived in National City. She was allegedly kidnapped some weeks before her death by Perez. Perez was arrested, but released after District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis didn’t file any charges, saying it could not prove a kidnapping had occurred.
The 3-0 opinion, authored by Judge Gilbert Nares and concurred by Judges Richard Huffman and Judith McConnell, noted Rogers saying in other proceedings that Perez didn’t seem to know how the legal system worked.
