Jose Raul Pineda claims that his massive prison sentence is unfair following an Orange County trial that found him guilty of 20 sex offenses against his nieces.
Pineda admits that when alone with the elementary school girls he liked to touch them, but he disputes that anyone could know his touching accompanied lewd and lascivious thoughts.
His position is that only he can know if he had dirty thoughts and because he said he didn't, then that's that — he can't be guilty of committing sex crimes.
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His explanation to his jury? He'd only been playful and joking when he touched the girls.
The
defense might have had a chance except that Pineda apparently couldn't
keep his fingers and tongue out of the girls' vaginas or off their
breasts and buttocks.
And there was this, according to court
records: He demanded that his nieces watch porno movies with him so they
could learn how to give him blow jobs.
When they reached their teens, three of the girls revealed the crimes to other family members.
This week, a California Court of Appeal based in Santa considered and, in a 17-page ruling written by Justice Kathleen E. O'Leary,
rejected all of Pineda's complaints that his constitutional rights were
violated because he was unfairly convicted and punished.
Upshot?
Pineda will continue to serve his prison sentence dished out by Orange County Superior Court Judge Richard W. Stanford.
The first time he'll be eligible to ask the parole board to restore his
freedom will be in 2141–about 33 presidential elections from now. He will be 173 years old.
–R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.