A state appeals court panel Monday rejected a convicted murderer’s bid for re-sentencing in the racially motivated killing of a homeless Black man in Lancaster nearly three decades ago.
The three-justice panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal found that the jury’s verdict conclusively established that Randall Lee Rojas was the “actual killer and that he acted with the specific intent to kill” Milton Walker Jr.
Rojas — who was described at the time as a half-Latino member of a white-supremacist gang — was among three people convicted in Walker’s Nov. 25, 1995, beating death.
Jurors found true an allegation that Rojas intentionally killed the victim because of his race, according to the appellate court panel’s 14-page ruling.
Rojas cursed at a prosecutor and an FBI agent at his November 1999 sentencing, when he was ordered to serve life in state prison without the possibility of parole.
The defendant subsequently filed a petition for re-sentencing in April 2022, contending that he could not currently be convicted of murder as a result of changes in state law that affect defendants in some murder cases. A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge rejected the petition in August 2022, according to the appellate court panel’s ruling.