Following emotional victim-impact statements, a judge sentenced Jessica Yesenia Quintanilla to 25 years to life for fatally shooting Leilani Marie Beauchamp, 19, in October 2021, while Jessica’s brother, Marco Antonio Quintanilla, got four years for being an accessory after the fact.
During a Friday afternoon proceeding in Solano County Superior Court in Fairfield, Judge William J. Pendergast then credited Jessica with more than three years in custody and Marco with more than 150 actual days credit.
Looking at Jessica, shackled and wearing a striped jail jumpsuit, he told her she would be subject to parole supervision for the rest of her life. Marco, likewise, would be subject to some parole supervision, the judge said.
Pendergast, who presided over the five-week trial that ended in November, also fined the pair several thousand dollars each, likely to be paid to the victim’s family. He then scheduled a restitution hearing for 9:30 a.m. Feb. 21 in Department 11, his courtroom.
And with the restitution hearing date set, Pendergast adjourned the nearly four-hour proceeding.
The hearing began with statements from the Quintanillas’ attorneys, their efforts to convince the judge to consider some mitigating factors before he pronounced the sentence.
San Francisco attorney William Alan Welch, who represented Jessica Quintanillas, said his client’s actions did not rise to “animus,” or hatred, when she shot and killed Beauchamp, who was lying in bed on the morning Oct. 30 with friend Juan Parra-Peralta, an airman stationed at Travis Air Force Base, with whom Jessica once had a romantic relationship.
He argued there was “no premeditation, no malice aforethought,” then described the deadly circumstances as “the quintessential heat of passion action.” He asked the judge to consider instead second-degree murder or voluntary manslaughter convictions, which carry lesser prison terms. Welch asked Pendergast to modify the jury’s verdict, but Pendergast denied his request.
San Francisco attorney Laurie D. Savill, who represented Marco Quintanilla, submitted to the judge a “Romero motion,” a request to remove a prior strike conviction from her client’s record. Marco was previously convicted twice, including one time for attempted murder in 2013 in Contra Costa County. Marco, said Savill, did not actually shoot the victim and “he pleaded and took responsibility for his actions.”
Additionally, noted Savill, her client, seated at the defense table and staring downwardly during the proceeding, cooperated with investigators after Beauchamp’s fatal shooting.
“His involvement was minimal,” she said.
However, Pendergast declined to grant the Romero motion, then noted he had “carefully read” all the letters submitted to the court after the Quintanillas’ convictions in mid-November.
The judge then called for victim-impact statements, each one read at the prosecution’s table, where Deputy District Attorney Ilana Shapiro, who prosecuted the case, and Fairfield police Detective Dennis Chapman, the lead investigator, sat.
Beauchamp’s maternal grandmother, Lourdes Giovannini, thanked Shapiro, then said her granddaughter “had a passion for art, music and design” and was pursuing an associate’s degree in arts in San Jose.
Some of her granddaughter’s computer files, she said, “reflected her big plans for life.”
Leilani Beauchamp also had a natural sense of fairness and kindness and “would feed a homeless person and give them the last penny she had.”
“Her siblings will now not know what their lives could have been without their big sister by their sides, and they are tremendously grieving her loss,” said Giovannini, adding, “Leilani was my first grandchild. I was in the delivery room when she took her first breath of life. The pain from her loss — it’s unspeakable.”
She told Pendergast the graphic autopsy images of Leilani, who was shot once in the head, are “pressed now and forever in my mind.”
Joseph Giovannini, Leilani’s grandfather and a colonel in the Air Force, said news of his granddaughter’s murder “destroyed a dozen lives.”
“To make matters worse, I have seen that Jessica has shown no remorse,” and continues to lie about what happened, he added.
Anthony Beauchamp, Leilani’s brother, told Pendergast, “The murder of my sister is something that I will never be able to forget and something that I will never stop thinking about at least once a day.”
Sierrah Pike, her younger sister, said, “Leilani was a very important person in our lives. Losing her, to me, is losing a best friend, an amazing sister and much more.”
Her mother, Violeta Giovannini, who was among the last to speak, said her daughter had plans to complete a bachelor’s degree in business.
“In her 19 years, she impacted hundreds of people,” she said. “I barely survived the past few years,” revealing she was “hospitalized and medicated.”
“My goal, my feeling, is to forgive,” said Violeta. “Forgiveness doesn’t mean that our actions have no consequences. I’m not here for revenge.”
In November the jury of seven women and five men found the Quintanillas guilty as charged. Marco, the father of one, was out of custody on bail before trial’s end, but Pendergast ordered him into custody and he was booked into Solano County Jail without bail. Jessica, the mother of two, ages 7 and 4, continues to be jailed without bail. Both await transfer to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
During the trial, testimony revealed that after killing Beauchamp, Jessica threatened Parra-Peralta with her handgun and forced him to drive to a rural road near Salinas, where he dumped Beauchamp’s blanket-wrapped body down a hillside and into vegetation.
Parra-Peralta later led Monterey County Sheriff’s Office investigators to the Beauchamp’s body on Nov. 1.
He, along with fellow airman Damien Ponders, both of whom were later discharged from the Air Force under less-than-honorable conditions, were granted immunity in exchange for their testimony during the trial.