The Incredible Shrinking Shooting Case

"I heard the tape, and the female eyewitness implicated someone else in the beginning of her interview," Sepe said. "Then [police] showed her a picture of [Orejel], and she said, 'Oh, yeah, his car was there, maybe it was him.' Then her brother said on the tape that the reason he knew it was [Orejel] was because his sister told him it was."

So what about the person who admitted he was the actual shooter?

"It wouldn't do any good to tell you his name, but the DA has a copy of his statement, which is on tape," Sepe said. "But I doubt they'll ever charge him, because they want to say that [Orejel] did the shooting."

That's pretty much what Schroeder said when I called her.

"The witnesses we had were cooperative and extremely credible," she said. "But we wanted to be sensitive and take into consideration that they had to continue to live in the same neighborhood as Mr. Orejel. We're happy with the sentence and pleased that Mr. Orejel is being held responsible for what he did."