Grieving dad battles to get justice for slain son

[FreakinDJ]

Source: Chip Johnson

Grieving dad battles to get justice for slain son

What Fred Santos wants most, he knows he can never have.

"Give me back my son and you can have all the lawsuits," the Concord father said in a phone interview this week. But in lieu of a miracle that would restore his boy, Santos wants justice on his slain son's behalf. So far, that hasn't happened either.

In one of his last acts in office, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger commuted the 16-year sentence of a man who pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in the 2008 stabbing death of Fred Santos' son, 22-year-old Luis Santos, who was a student at Mesa College in San Diego.

The ex-governor later told Newsweek magazine that he reduced the sentence of the convict, Esteban Núñez, to seven years as a favor to a friend - the defendant's father, former state Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez. Earlier, when a Los Angeles TV reporter asked Schwarzenegger to explain the commutation, the former governor - who had repeatedly avoided the question - bristled. "You are boring the hell out of me." So when a letter from Schwarzenegger arrived at the Santos' Concord home expressing sincerest apologies for failing to notify the family beforehand of his decision, the words rang hollow.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/07/15/BAS41KALQH.DTL&tsp=1

[WatsonT]

1. Sickening

I mean it's usually understood that the well connected get a different kind of "justice" than the rest of us. But usually they aren't so upfront about it.