SAN JOSE — A Santa Clara County Superior Court judge has been compelled to revisit his recent decision to grant the release from jail of a Sunnyvale murder defendant ahead of his trial for a deadly shooting, after prosecutors challenged the ruling in an effort to keep him in custody.
Judge Hector Ramon ruled Oct. 31 that 33-year-old Vicente Aguilera Chavez, charged earlier this year alongside another man with a 2017 alleged gang shooting in a Sunnyvale night club parking lot, deserved pretrial release in part on the strength of Aguilera’s crime-free record since he was released from prison in 2022 after completing an unrelated burglary sentence.
Ramon’s ruling echoed Aguilera’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Jennifer Redding, who filed a motion last month seeking his release. Redding argued that Aguilera denies his involvement in the shooting, has no violent criminal convictions, and has strong community ties in the Bay Area that include a teenage son and a budding pop-up eatery opened prior to his arrest earlier this year.
“There is no evidence that Mr. Aguilera, especially with (supervised release) conditions, would present any risk of bodily harm to others,” Redding wrote. “Mr. Aguilera is motivated to clear his name … There is no compelling interest in detaining Mr. Aguilera on public safety grounds or out of concern he is a flight risk.”
The District Attorney’s Office responded this week with a motion asking Ramon to reconsider his release decision, pointing to the gravity of the murder charge and expressing skepticism about Aguilera’s clean criminal history in the three years since he left prison.
“The court is gambling he does not pose a risk to public safety because he has not been arrested for the last few years,” the motion reads. “The court should give equal weight to his criminal history … and the fact that he brazenly murdered a stranger in front of a crowd because the stranger was drunk and mouthing off.”
A Friday court hearing in San Jose was supposed to settle the issue, but Ramon postponed the matter by a week because of the lack of an available court reporter to officially document the proceeding.
Aguilera and Agustin Sandoval were arrested in January, and were sent to trial for the killing of 21-year-old Edu Veliz-Salgado following a preliminary hearing held over the summer. Trial proceedings are set to continue Monday.
Ramon is known for making meticulous in-court analyses for bail and custody decisions. He often gives encyclopedic recitations of the landmark Humphrey decision by the California Supreme Court, which requires trial-court judges to factor a defendant’s ability to pay when setting bail and exhaustively consider whether non-jail alternatives — such as electronic monitoring — can sufficiently ensure public safety and the defendant’s court appearances.
In their latest motion, prosecutors noted that Ramon himself remanded Aguilera to jail without bail after his initial arraignment, and that the judge who oversaw the preliminary hearing preserved that custody status. But on Friday, in brief remarks before postponing the matter, Ramon cited case law he said gives the initial custody-setting judge — in this case himself — “inherent authority to change your mind if you made a mistake.”
The DA’s office remains firm in its objection.
“In our opinion, the analysis that he is not a risk to public safety is nonsensical,” Assistant District Attorney Stacey Capps said in an interview. “The fact we don’t have arrests in a two-year period does not negate his significant risk to the public at large.”
Redding called the DA’s stance on the pretrial release — a relative rarity in murder trials — a request to “essentially ignore the law.”
“They are not asking the court to do this because of any new facts or evidence, but simply because they did not like the result. This is not right,” Redding said Friday. “There is no legal basis to change the court’s lawful and well reasoned ruling.”
According to the shooting investigation, in the early morning hours of June 8, 2017, Veliz was at the La Ronda night club and was visibly drunk and belligerent, resulting in him being expelled. While in the parking lot, Veliz reportedly drove against traffic and yelled out gang slogans.
Soon after, an SUV alleged to be carrying Aguilera and Sandoval pulled up alongside. The SUV’s headlights turned off, and shots were fired from the front-passenger side of the defendants’ vehicle.
The shooting was a cold case for several years until detectives with the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety revisited the investigation, which included meeting with Aguilera in prison. They claim he spoke about being a passenger in the SUV in the parking lot when the shooting occurred, but denied having direct involvement.
Redding has argued that the case against her client is circumstantial, and in her latest filing quoted the judge from the preliminary hearing, who said the murder case has “major holes” before greenlighting it for trial.
“Mr. Aguilera Chavez is presumed innocent,” Redding said. “As long as Mr. Aguilera Chavez continues to honor the conditions of his release, he should remain out of custody while he fights his case.”