A 36-year-old man who was a teenager when he fatally gunned down an Oceanside police officer was resentenced Tuesday to life in prison without parole — although it doesn’t preclude the potential he will someday be released on parole.
Meki Gaono was 17 when he and two alleged gang members opened fire on Officer Dan Bessant days before Christmas in 2006. He was arrested, convicted of murder and sentenced in 2009 to life without parole. As a juvenile tried as an adult, it was the harshest sentence Gaono could get.
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But state law has since changed under Proposition 57, requiring reconsideration of whether Gaono should have been tried as an adult, and prompting a fresh look at his sentence. On Tuesday, San Diego Superior Court Judge Peter Deddeh weighed several factors before giving Gaono a new sentence, which was essentially the same as his sentence more than a decade ago.
“It was an assassination,” Deddeh said. “It wasn’t a shootout. It was an assassination. I just can’t overlook the circumstances of this event.”
The three teens were standing in front of a home on Arthur Avenue when another officer happened to conduct a traffic stop at Arthur and Gold Drive, nearly 400 feet away. Bessant stopped by at some point to assist.
Prosecutors argued the trio watched the police for about 15 minutes before deciding to open fire. Two of them used handguns. Gaono used a rifle, firing seven rounds, one of which pierced Bessant’s heart. No one else was hit.
“He knew who he was shooting at, and he went forward with that plan,” Deddeh said.
There is another criminal justice reform at play in Gaono’s case: youthful offender parole. The law now takes into account a person’s age at the time of their offense, and young offenders who received life sentences must be given parole hearings by their 25th year of incarceration — even those serving a sentence of life without parole.
Gaono — who was roughly 45 days shy of his 18th birthday when he killed Bessant — has been incarcerated for more than 18 years. He should get his first parole hearing in about seven years.
When Bessant died, he was 25 and an Oceanside native, married and the father of a 2-month-old boy. On Tuesday, his father, Steve Bessant, said Deddeh’s decision to sentence Gaono to life without parole was “just.”
“It’s a relief, but it’s short-term,” the father said, pointing to Gaono’s expected parole hearings. “We’ll take the seven years.”
The elder Bessant also said it “feels like you’re getting drug through a knot hole because you’re going through this thing again.”
“I don’t have any ill will on Meki,” Steve Bessant said. “I don’t want him to be punished. I just want Meki to be separated. When I think of the chance of Meki being released and my wife being at the bank or the grocery store or the post office or walking on the pier in Oceanside and running into him — that gives me shudders.”
Also at the hearing, and also asking for Gaono to receive the maximum sentence, was Oceanside Police Chief Taurino Valdovinos. He and Officer Bessant had attended the academy together. They were friends. They were also partners but had been busy handling differing obligations the day Bessant was killed. “I should have been with Dan that night to help protect him,” Valdovinos said.
“Meki’s killing of Dan fractured the trust between the police department and a portion of our community,” the chief said. “It has taken 18 years for us to begin to mend those relationships, but we will continue to serve our community, the same community that Dan loved so much.”
Gaono’s case was one of the region’s most high-profile cases affected by the passage of Prop. 57 in California in 2016. The voter-approved change removed from prosecutors the power to directly charge juveniles as adults. Now all juvenile cases start in Juvenile Court, and a judge reviews the case before deciding if the minor should be tried as an adult.
Last month, to that end, San Diego Superior Court Judge Kimberlee Lagotta reviewed Gaono’s case to determine if he should have been tried as a juvenile. She reaffirmed that Gaono was properly tried as an adult.
But because the case got a fresh look, Gaono’s sentence also needed to be reconsidered. And that is what landed him in a San Diego Central Courtroom on Tuesday.
Gaono and friends Penifoti “P.J.” Taeutui and Jose Compre — also juveniles at the time of the killing — were charged as adults in 2007. The initial case against Compre fell apart, but Gaono and Taeutui were subsequently found guilty at separate trials. Both were sentenced to life in prison without parole.
In October 2016 — nearly 10 years after the killing — prosecutors refiled the case against Compre, citing new and undisclosed evidence. He was arrested and again charged as an adult. He later pleaded guilty to manslaughter. His case is not eligible for review.
Taeutui’s case is up for review. It’s still in the early stages, but he is due in San Diego Superior Court for a hearing later this month.