A Signal Hill resident whose murder conviction was overturned in the April 2020 stabbing death of a man in Long Beach has 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.”