Sanilac County’s Circuit Court Judge Timothy Wrathell denied a resentencing motion on Tuesday as made by Trinidad Paredes, Jr, who pleaded guilty to second degree murder almost 13 years ago, when he was 15-years-old.
The ruling denying the motion was made on Tuesday, July 11. Paredes was sentenced in 2011 for the stabbing death of 24-year-old Jennifer Gonzalez in Croswell on August 15, 2010. Gonzalez, a mother of two, had been stabbed over 30 times. For the crime, Judge Donald Teeple sentenced Paredes to a minimum 31 years, 3 months, up to a maximum of 50 years in prison.
Following subsequent US and Michigan Supreme Court cases, which determined that certain life sentences are unconstitutional to give to a juvenile for first or second degree murder, unless certain steps have been taken to factor in the youth and immaturity of the juvenile perpetrator. Due to these court decisions, Paredes filed a motion for resentencing, arguing that the decision’s findings also applied to him.
Sanilac County Prosecutor Brenda Sanford responded to the motion, arguing that the procedures requested and the cases cited by Paredes did not apply as he had not been sentenced for life, but to a certain term of years, citing her own cases. She also argued that Judge Teeple had taken Paredes’ youth into account during sentencing, and asked Judge Wrathell to affirm the sentence as proper.
Judge Wrathell agreed with the prosecutor’s reasoning, citing logic similar to it in his written opinion ruling against Paredes and his motion for a new sentencing.
This is not Paredes’ first time attempting to have his sentence overturned or lessened, having tried in 2014 to get sentencing relief via a writ of habeas corpus, which was denied with prejudice. Attempts in 2012 to have the case heard before the Michigan Court of Appeals was also denied. As of 2021 letters to the Open MI Door Campaign, a campaign to end solitary confinement and advance safer, more therapeutic alternatives to segregation in the state, Paredes claims to have spent over 4 years of his sentence thus far in solitary confinement, and had been making efforts to have his sentence halved.
He is currently assigned to the Macomb Correctional Facility, and was sentenced in June for a 2022 incident where he possessed a weapon of some kind. For that, he earned an addition one year and one month to five year sentence.
