Livermore Man Gets 20 Years In Prison In Fatal DUI: Report

LIVERMORE, CA — A Livermore man accepted a plea deal with the Alameda County District Attorney's Office and will spend 20 years in state prison after killing a mother and her 14-month-old daughter in a 2015 drunken driving crash, Bay Area News Group reported.

Brian Z. Jones, 41, pleaded guilty to vehicular manslaughter in the deaths of Esperanza Morales-Rodriguez, 46, of Seaside and her daughter, Ulidia Perez-Morales, the news organization reported.

Jones will get credit toward his latest sentence for time served after his first conviction in the case, which was thrown out on appeal, Bay Area News Group reported.

The crash occurred after Jones drank 20 ounces of beer at the Livermore Wine Festival, drank another 22-ounce beer at a restaurant, then drove his Corvette at nearly 100 mph on a 35 mph road, court records showed. His car jumped the curb near a home where a family party was taking place, hit a utility box, then hit Morales-Rodriguez, baby Ulidia and two other children.

Jones was previously sentenced in 2018 to 30 years to life in prison in the case after he was convicted in 2017 of second-degree murder in the deaths of the mother and daughter. He was also convicted on a felony driving while intoxicated charge for injuring a 7-year-old boy at the scene.

A California appeals court threw out his double murder conviction in June, ruling that the conviction should be tossed because Alameda County Superior Court Judge Paul Delucchi should not have dismissed a juror who "felt coerced or bullied" by another juror, the appeals court wrote. The two jurors were replaced, and after more than four hours of deliberation, the jury unanimously found Jones guilty on all charges.

The appeals court found that there was a high bar for deciding to excuse a juror, and Delucchi did not meet that standard. The juror who was discharged hadn't asked for that and didn't say she was unwilling or unable to continue, the court said.

"Although we are sympathetic to the quandary facing the trial judge in these circumstances, the record simply does not support, as a demonstrable reality, a conclusion that Juror No. 10 was unable or unwilling to continue deliberating," the court found. "The error is prejudicial and requires reversal of the judgment."

Read more from Bay Area News Group. Read more about the appeals case here.

— Bay City News contributed to this report