PLEASANTON, CA—A San Francisco state appeals court reduced the sentence for Stephen Carlson from first to second-degree murder. Carlson had been found guilty of the 1984 murder of 14-year-old Tina Faelz.
Faelz of Pleasanton was killed by 44 stab wounds while on her way home from school on April 5, 1984. Her body was found near Interstate 680 in a drainage ditch.
The case went cold and unsolved for over two decades. It was announced in 2011 that investigators had launched a DNA search in 2007 when blood was found on Faelz’s purse, which had been found hanging from a nearby tree at the crime scene. The DNA from the blood was linked to Carlson, who was 16 at the time and went to school with Faelz. Carlson already had a criminal record of drug crimes and lewd acts which involved a 13-year-old girl. He was arrested and charged with Faelz’s murder.
In 2014, an Alameda County Superior Court convicted Carlson of first-degree murder and he was sentenced to 26 years to life in prison.
The case will return for re-sentencing to Superior Court for second-degree murder. The reduced charge can carry a possible term of 15 years to life.
During Carlson’s appeal, a three-judge Court of Appeal panel explained the conviction was reduced to second-degree murder because proof of premeditation and deliberate intent, two key elements needed for a first-degree conviction, was not provided by prosecutors.
The panel continued to explain that the prosecutors’ main argument of premeditation at the time was the high number of stab wounds. The California Supreme Court argued that brutality alone is not enough to prove premeditation.
Several other claims in Carlson’s appeal have been rejected by the panel. One of those being Carlson’s videotaped interview with two detectives in 2011 when he was inside a Santa Cruz County Jail on a drug charge.
The Faelz family gave no comment on the ruling.
