Crime & Safety

Judges Toss Out Murder Charges in Essoe Shooting

Sheriff's Sgt. Ira Essoe II, who patrolled the San Juan Capistrano area, died in 2010 from injuries brought on by gunshot wounds sustained almost 30 years earlier.

from injuries brought on by gunshot wounds sustained almost 30 years earlier. The 1980 incident left him paralyzed from the waist down.

His son, Essoe III, now works at the San Juan Capistrano station.

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The D.A. was attempting to bring murder charges against two men already jailed in the case. They were previously convicted of attempting to kill Essoe II when they shot him while stealing a car from an Orange shopping mall in November 1980.

The three-judge panel of the appellate court ruled Monday that that the murder case can not go forward because: "to make the killing either murder or manslaughter, it is requisite that the party die within three years and a day after the cause of death administered."

Find out what's happening in San Juan Capistranowith free, real-time updates from Patch.

On the sheriff's departmet's blog, spokesman John McDonald wrote that the aforementioned law was enacted in the 1960s and revoked in 1997. "The court ruled that language protected the two men charged in Sgt. Essoe's murder because it was the law at the time of the shooting," McDonald wrote.

The Orange County Register reports that Robert Duston Strong and David Michael Knick, behind bars for more than nine months on the murder charges, will go home by Oct. 31 if Monday’s ruling becomes final.

"Our hope is that justice prevails and this case is taken to a higher court on appeal. Those responsible for his death should be held fully answerable for their actions," said Sheriff Sandra Hutchens on the sheriff's department's blog.


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