Police informant convicted of Pittsburg murder in case that hinged on his own statements

MARTINEZ — An Elk Grove man who unintentionally implicated himself in a chilly case murder when he believed he was serving to police determine the killer has been convicted of homicide.

Paea Tasini, 46, was convicted of murdering 22-year-old Danny Guyse Jr. in 2000, in Pittsburg, and trying to homicide one other man in a taking pictures a number of months prior. The prosecution’s greatest proof at trial was movies of Tasini’s personal statements to police, wherein he positioned himself on the scene of each shootings and basically confessed to ordering Guyse’s homicide.

Guyse was shot and killed Sept. 27, 2000 as he sat in a brown Datsun automobile in Pittsburg. Prosecutors say Tasini and two different males had been driving by and noticed him. Tasini just isn’t believed to be the shooter, however allegedly informed the shooter to get out of the automobile and execute Guyse.

The motive, in accordance with prosecutors, needed to do with Guyse allegedly insulting the shooter and being mates with members of a drug ring that was feuding with the occupants of the Mustang.

The case remained unsolved till 2019, when a Pittsburg police chilly case investigator realized Tasini had given a previous assertion that investigators hadn’t recorded. So he went as much as Elk Grove and interviewed Tasini, who gave authorities a blow-by-blow account of the killing. Tasini additionally admitted to taking pictures and wounding a person who’d thrown rocks at his automobile in Pittsburg eight months earlier, and stated that he scolded the person who later killed Guyse for not additionally firing on the rock throwers.

Throughout trial, Tasini’s lawyer argued that Tasini had no concept that Guyse was to be fatally shot, and that he believed the rock throwers had really been firing photographs.

Jurors convicted Tasini after asking Decide Mary Ann O’Malley for readability on whether or not state legislation permits folks to be convicted of homicide even when they didn’t personally kill the sufferer.