A Signal Hill resident whose murder conviction was overturned in the April 2020 stabbing death of a man in Long Beach pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter.
Edson Eduardo Rufino was sentenced Tuesday to 12 years in state prison in connection with his plea, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.
The case against Rufino was sent back to a Long Beach courtroom after a state appeals court panel found in a 2-1 ruling last November that a prosecutor “misstated the requirements for heat of passion” involving the lesser offense of voluntary manslaughter and that the panel’s majority “can conceive of no reasonable tactical purpose for defense counsel to not object to the prosecutor’s misstatement of the law on this issue.”
Associate Justice Lamar W. Baker objected to the reversal, writing in his dissent that he believes “there could be good reasons why defense counsel did not object to the prosecution’s argument” and that he believed “there is no basis to conclude defendant’s trial attorney provided ineffective assistance of counsel on this record.”
The appellate court panel ordered the case to be sent back to the trial court to determine if the prosecution wanted to retry him for second-degree murder for the April 2, 2020, killing of Leandro Maza.
Rufino, now 23, was convicted in July 2021 of the murder charge, along with two counts of assault with a deadly weapon and one count each of contempt of court and resisting, obstructing or delaying a peace officer or emergency medical technician.
Rufino was sentenced in December 2021 to 20 years to life in state prison, with Superior Court Judge Richard M. Goul rejecting the defense’s request then to reduce the murder conviction to voluntary manslaughter.
Rufino violated a restraining order that his girlfriend’s mother had obtained by visiting his girlfriend that day at her mother’s home and used a knife to threaten the girlfriend’s brother and another visitor to the home when his girlfriend’s mother called police, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.
Rufino fled into another home and then allegedly stabbed Maza — whom police said had armed himself with a metal pole — as the defendant left that house after police had been called, according to the District Attorney’s Office.
Maza was taken to a hospital, where he died that night of a stab wound to the chest, according to the Los Angeles County medical examiner’s office.
Rufino fled the scene and was arrested early the next morning by Long Beach police, authorities said. He has remained behind bars since then.
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