SAN JOSE — Carlos Arevalo Carranza, the man charged with brutally killing San Jose resident Bambi Larson six years ago, touching off a public and political firestorm over Santa Clara County’s sanctuary policies, is headed for a conservatorship after two incompetency findings doomed his prospects for a murder trial.
At a Superior Court hearing Friday, the county Public Guardian, which operates under the County Counsel’s Office, presented a petition to place Arevalo into a county-managed conservatorship. Judge Kelley Paul approved their corresponding request to release Arevalo to the supervision of the Public Guardian, which means he will move from the county jail to a locked psychiatric facility while the petition is litigated.
Arevalo, 31, a diagnosed schizophrenic, appeared in court Friday for the brief hearing. He has been in jail custody since late May after returning from Napa State Hospital, one of California’s preeminent institutions for people charged with crimes but deemed mentally unfit to stand trial.
Arevalo was initially found incompetent in 2023, but after about a year and a half at the Napa facility, he was declared “restored” and was brought back to county jail to face trial. His attorney, Assistant Public Defender Miguel Rodriguez, quickly challenged the restoration finding, and documented Arevalo’s swift regression, which included his refusal to take his medication, visit his attorneys, or go to court.
The district attorney’s office secured a court order to force him to take an injectable medication, but that was not effective. On April 14, Arevalo was declared incompetent a second time, and sent back to Napa State Hospital.
State law mandates a two-year deadline to restore someone’s competency. On May 23, a Napa State Hospital doctor, who had earlier declared Arevalo competent, determined he could not be rehabilitated before the deadline expired in fall of this year. He was sent back to county jail, and has been there since.
Arevalo is expected to be placed in what is known as a Murphy conservatorship, which terminates his criminal liability and sends him to locked psychiatric care under the monitoring of the Public Guardian and County Counsel’s Office. His status will be reviewed annually, assessing whether he is still a danger to himself or the public.
Rodriguez said Arevalo’s condition left the court system with no other path.
“Due process requires that a person being accused and going through the criminal justice process to understand the nature of the proceedings and assist counsel. Unfortunately there are people in our society who are accused of horrible offenses who are not competent,” he said in an interview. “With Mr. Arevalo Carranza, the alternatives before the court are to release him, or have him conserved.”
District Attorney Jeff Rosen told this news organization earlier this year that he was concerned about Arevalo “gaming” the system and strategically exhibiting mental deterioration to get to this point, or the county eventually becoming incentivized to end the conservatorship, since it can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. He echoed part of that sentiment Friday.
“I want the man who butchered and murdered a beloved member of our community for no reason to be locked up for a long, long time,” Rosen said in a statement to this news organization. “It is deeply concerning that in a year or so we may not know exactly where he will be. He could be in a locked mental health facility. Or he could be free. That is too big of a difference for our community’s safety.”
Rodriguez objected to Rosen’s stance, arguing that the severity of Arevalo’s psychiatric problems and the history of conservatorships for homicide suspects suggest he will be locked up for the rest of his life. He also extended sympathy to Larson’s family and friends, saying the absence of a trial deprives both them and Arevalo of experiencing finality or closure in the case.
“This is not a (criminal) defense,” Rodriguez said of the conservatorship outcome. “It shouldn’t be in dispute whether Mr. Arevalo Carranza can be restored. He was at the state hospital for a year and a half … We don’t have a choice. We cannot defend a man who doesn’t know what’s happening.”
Another key consequence of Friday’s court action is that the legal matter transfers from criminal to probate court — taking it out of normal public view. Once Arevalo is fully placed under conservatorship, the only public notifications about him would come if his security status is lessened, or if he is freed under a determination he no longer poses a public risk.
In the early morning hours of Feb. 28, 2019, San Jose police investigators say Arevalo entered the San Jose home where the 59-year-old Larson lived alone and stabbed her to death in her bedroom. There is no sign the two had ever met; when Arevalo was arrested by police 11 days later, officers found him with Larson’s phone and tablet, a knife and boots that matched bloody shoe prints found at the crime scene.
Arevalo, a native of El Salvador, had entered the United States illegally. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said he had been the subject of six ICE civil detainer requests following previous arrests on suspicion of drug, burglary and other crimes.
Larson’s killing prompted fierce debate among county political leaders and law enforcement officials who recognized the county’s sanctuary status — barring local government from participating in immigration enforcement — but wanted a stronger position against people in the country illegally who commit violent crimes.
The Board of Supervisors ultimately stood by the county’s sanctuary policy to deny the detainer requests. Supervisors sided with officials who contended ICE had the resources, including access to law-enforcement databases, to make the detentions themselves.
In the second Trump Administration, immigration officials appear to have embraced that directive, with intermittent reports surfacing at South Bay jail facilities describing ICE agents, drawing on publicly available information, executing on-site detentions of people. The sheriff’s office, which operates the jails, has maintained that its hands are tied, and that they cannot actively impede the agents, and activists have called on the county to institute stronger protections or risk its sanctuary status becoming meaningless.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.