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In his last remaining hours as California governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger issued three sentence commutations. The most notable went to the son of former Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, Esteban Núñez, who is serving time for voluntary manslaughter. Núñez's legal problems began in San Diego on Oct. 4, 2008. After Núñez, then 19, and some friends were not admitted to a fraternity party, they went looking for a fight. They found a group of students who also had been drinking. After a short but fatal clash, Luis Dos Santos, 22, lay dying. Schwarzenegger wrote that he reduced Núñez's sentence from 16 years...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger decision to commute the prison sentence for the son of former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez has outraged some of the outgoing governor's critics, including a victim's father. On his last day in office, Schwarzenegger shortened Esteban Nunez's sentence to seven years, saying he thought the 16-year sentence was excessive. The move came just hours before Schwarzenegger left office. Nunez pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and assault with a deadly weapon for his role in a fight that killed 22-year-old Luis Santos near San Diego State University in 2008. The victim's father called the decision ridiculous and politically...

Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's decision to reduce the prison sentence of a former Assembly speaker's son sparked outrage Monday, from the district attorney who prosecuted Esteban Núñez to local families whose loved ones are spending more time in prison – for lesser crimes. "We were shocked to hear of the governor's last-minute commutation, which greatly diminishes justice for victim Luis Santos and re-victimizes his family and friends," San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis said in a prepared statement. She said her office was not consulted about the sentence reduction, in which Núñez's prison term was cut from 16 years...

On his final night in office, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger reduced the prison sentence of the son of former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez, Esteban Nuñez, who had pleaded guilty to participating in the killing of a college student. The governor also granted several other commutations and pardons and gave plum government appointments to political allies and the spouse of his chief of staff. Schwarzenegger announced the moves in a batch of eleventh-hour press releases e-mailed to reporters. Esteban Nuñez, now 21, was sentenced to 16 years in prison for his role in the stabbing death of Luis Santos. Schwarzenegger cut the...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, just hours before leaving the governor’s office, shaved nine years off the combined 16-year sentence of Esteban Nunez, the son of former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez. The younger Nunez was one of three young men charged in a knife fight near San Diego State University in October 2008, in which Luis Dos Santos was stabbed to death. The man who wielded the knife in the fatal attack, Ryan Jett, entered a plea agreement with prosecutors and was sentenced to state prison. Esteban Nunez wielded a knife that injured another participant in the fight. He pleaded guilty to...

Outgoing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has commuted the prison sentence of the son of a former state Assembly speaker, cutting his sentence from 16 years to 7 years in the 2008 killing of a Concord man. The move came just hours before Schwarzenegger was to leave office. In 2009, Esteban Nuñez, son of Fabian Nuñez, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in the fatal stabbing of Luis Dos Santos, 22, during a fight in San Diego. He and co-defendant Ryan Jett were sentenced to 16 years in prison, the maximum sentence. Santos, who was attending San Diego Mesa College, was killed in...

San Diego, CA (AP) -- A judge has sentenced the son of former California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez to 16 years in prison for the fatal stabbing of a San Diego college student.

Dozens of California Assembly employees can thank the state's fiscal crisis for padding their pensions through a controversial program pushed by Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez before he was termed out last year. Fifty-five Assembly employees received "golden handshakes" that can be worth thousands annually by awarding two years of extra service credits for retiring by last month, records show. Recipients included nine aides to Núñez – eight of whose salaries exceeded $90,000 per year. Prominent retirees included Danny Eaton and Steve Maviglio, who left jobs paying $212,000 and $175,000, respectively, the former as Núñez's chief of staff and the latter...

SAN DIEGO – The teenage son of former state Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez and three friends, all from Sacramento, pleaded not guilty Thursday afternoon in San Diego Superior Court to charges of murder and assault with a deadly weapon. Esteban Nuñez, Ryan Jett, Rafael Garcia and Leshanor Thomas are accused of stabbing to death a Mesa College student and injuring three others in a knife fight at San Diego State University on Oct. 4. Judge David Szumowski set bail Thursday at $2 million for Nuñez, Garcia and Thomas, who are all 19 years old. Bail was denied for Jett, 22,...

Possible gang link probed in arrest of Nuñez's son The former Assembly speaker's son and three other suspects in a fatal stabbing in San Diego identified themselves as members of The Hazard Crew. Police say the group fits the definition of a criminal street gang. By Tony Perry and Patrick McGreevy 5:11 PM PST, December 3, 2008 Reporting from Sacramento and San Diego -- Esteban Nuñez, the son of former California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez, and three other men arrested in a fatal stabbing of a college student in San Diego fit the definition of a criminal street gang, police...

Former Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez has taken a lucrative seat on the board of directors for a workers' compensation insurer after helping broker a 2004 deal that benefited the industry. The Los Angeles Democrat was termed out of the Assembly on Sunday, and on Monday, Zenith National Insurance Corp. appointed him to its board. Company filings say that directors are paid $90,000 per year, with an additional $40,000 paid for every committee on which they serve. Núñez said he did not know if his post was paid. "You have to ask Zenith," he said. Zenith did not return calls for...

Former Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, who served as both Democratic foil and dealmaker with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, has joined the high-powered public relations firm whose California office is currently occupied by Schwarzenegger's former campaign manager and communications director. Núñez, a Los Angeles Democrat, will be the newest partner and co-chair of Mercury Public Affairs, LLC, a political firm with offices in seven cities across the country, according to a letter he has sent to supporters. Steve Schmidt, who was the architect of Schwarzenegger's reelection campaign, and Adam Mendelsohn, the governor's former communications director and deputy chief of staff, are the...

The humble cop who took down an illegal immigrant who shot two other officers last night in a Queens subway station said today, "I'm not a hero." Lt. Gary Abrahall put four bullets into Raul Nuñez, who jumped a turnstyle and then coldly shot two cops -- Shane Farina, who was critically wounded, and Jason Maass, who was grazed with a bullet -- with one of their own guns. "The cops that took the bullets, they're the heroes," Abrahall said today outside his house. Farina took a bullet in the abdomen and it exited through his sternum. "[Farina] is doing...

SACRAMENTO – As Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez reflected on his unlikely rise from a San Diego barrio to one of the state's most powerful offices, he recalled poignant, painful moments of a generation ago. “I remember making friends with a kid in La Jolla – my father was a gardener there; my mother was a maid – and going over to the kid's home near the Sea Lodge. “We were playing, and right as we were going to go inside and play with his toys, his mom came out and said to me: 'You have to wait outside. You can't...

Fabian Núñez, the eighth and longest-serving Assembly speaker in the 13 years since the legendary Willie Brown was forced to vacate the position in 1995, is being forced out himself by a legislative term limit law he tried, and failed, to persuade voters to change. None of Núñez's seven predecessors had more than a momentary impact; indeed, a few of them were there scarcely long enough to change the I-love-me plaques in the speaker's ornate office. But Núñez, elected as a first-termer in the hope that he could bring some stability and accomplishment to the Assembly, does have a record...

SACRAMENTO — The Legislature's Democratic leaders vowed during a student protest today to fight $1 billion in higher education cuts, setting the stage for a summer-long deadlock over the deficit-plagued state budget.Senate leader Don Perata, D-Oakland, and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles, made the comments to a crowd of hundreds outside the Capitol that included contingents from California state universities San Jose and Hayward, and UC Berkeley. The chanting, sign-waving demonstrators also included students from Bay Area community colleges."We need to raise taxes to preserve education,'' Perata said.The Senate leader, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles, and other Democrats...

Chalk up two more pyrrhic victories for the cynics about the Capitol's ability to do the public's business in a straightforward, unhypocritical manner – and the outgoing speaker of the state Assembly, Fabian Núñez, is at the center of both. Victory No. 1 has to do with the Assembly's secretive decision to offer more than 200 of its staff members a golden handshake in the form of extra pension benefits. It's being billed as a contribution to closing the state's chronic budget deficit, but how it does that is, to put it charitably, unclear since the Assembly refuses to release...

Assemblyman Hector De La Torre said Tuesday that he was ousted as chairman of the powerful Rules Committee for challenging Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez's "golden handshake" offer to employees as a potential taxpayer ripoff. De La Torre, D-South Gate, said he simply could not justify – despite Núñez's insistence – pension-sweetening offers to 222 employees, of whom 13 already qualify for pensions above $100,000 and an additional 12 for pensions of $70,000 to $99,999. "I felt it wasn't good for taxpayers and didn't make sense in light of everything else that's going on with the budget," he said. De La...

A political fight over raising taxes to help solve California's fiscal crisis was touched off Wednesday when Democratic lawmakers proposed taxing big oil to help pay for threatened public education programs.ABX3 9, introduced by Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, D-Los Angeles, would have raised $1.2 billion a year by taxing oil firms' windfall profits and through a separate tax on petroleum that is pumped in California.The bill, which required a two-thirds vote to pass, was defeated on the Assembly floor after Republicans refused to vote for the new taxes. But several other Democrat-authored tax bills are likely to stir heated debate...

SACRAMENTO -- A new water bond has risen from the ruins of two weeks of backbiting and false hope. Good thing too. U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, an influential Democrat, has sent a letter accusing Democrat leaders of blocking progress on negotiations over how to respond to California's water crisis and subtly threatening to back a GOP/pro-business bond if they don't get their act together. State Sen. Mike Machado, a Linden Democrat who has been actively pursuing a deal and working with Republicans regularly, submitted a $6.8 billion compromise Thursday. Significantly, Machado's announcement included words of encouragement from Sen. Dave Cogdill,...