DA to seek death penalty for second time against killer of Sacramento cop Tara O'Sullivan

Sharon Bernstein, The Sacramento Bee on Dec 20, 2024

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Sacramento County prosecutors on Friday said they will seek the death penalty for a second time against Adel Ramos, who in August pleaded guilty to the 2019 ambush murder of Sacramento police officer Tara O’Sullivan.

The decision comes after a jury in November deadlocked on the question of whether Ramos, 51, should be put to death for killing O’Sullivan in a bloody ambush that rocked the Sacramento region, leading Superior Court Judge James Arguelles to declare a mistrial.

“The District Attorney has decided to seek a retrial,” Deputy District Attorney Jeff Hightower told Arguelles at a hearing in superior court in Sacramento on Friday, but made no further statement about the case or the decision.

Ramos, his long hair tied back in a pony tail, stared straight ahead as he sat at the defense table, continually bouncing left foot up and down. His attorney, Peter Kmeto, did not address the court other than to discuss a start date for the new trial.

In California, the death penalty cannot be imposed unless a unanimous jury agrees that the sentence is appropriate and required under law. A separate trial is held to determine the penalty.

After a proceeding so vivid and traumatic that Hightower urged jurors to seek counseling from a therapist after it was over, the seven women and five men said they could not agree on a sentence for Ramos. Arguelles set March 5 as the date for a second penalty trial, which will be held before a new jury.

Vera Cvetich, who served on Ramos’ first jury and said that the case had forever changed her life, attended the hearing on Friday, as did O’Sullivan’s former partner, Daniel Chipps, the training officer who accompanied O’Sullivan to the house where Ramos lay in wait.

Sacramento Police Chief Kathy Lester also attended the hearing, but did not comment on the decision.

California has not carried out an execution since 2006, and a moratorium on capital punishment has been in place since shortly after O’Sullivan’s murder. But the death penalty remains on the books, and prosecutors say a future governor could reverse the moratorium and re-open the state’s shuttered execution chamber. More than 600 inmates are under a sentence of death in California, the most in any state.

Ramos pleaded guilty on Aug. 30 to felony counts including murder with special circumstances for O’Sullivan’s slaying and attempted murder of another officer at the violent, bloody scene in Del Paso Heights.

O’Sullivan, 26, who had graduated six months earlier from the Sacramento Police Department’s academy, was showered with bullets by Ramos on June 19, 2019, as she attempted to help a woman retrieve her belongings from a home where he had been behaving erratically.

She was mortally wounded and lay on the ground nearly an hour before tactical officers were able to secure her rescue.

After an hourslong standoff, Ramos surrendered.

California has spent $313 million on death penalty prosecutions and appeals in the five years since Gov. Gavin Newsom imposed the moratorium on executions, an analysis by The Sacramento Bee showed. But prosecutors continue to seek capital punishment in the state, saying it sends a message to defendants and can be a comfort to the families of murder victims.

There are just 36 lawyers in California who are trained to work on required death penalty appeals cases, leading to backlogs as long as 30 years.

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