{"id":338531,"date":"2026-05-30T02:41:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T02:41:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/338531\/"},"modified":"2026-05-30T02:41:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T02:41:12","slug":"jesse-manuel-figueroa-san-jose-father-sentenced-to-25-years-to-life-in-prison-for-2020-killing-of-8-month-old-daughter-raina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/338531\/","title":{"rendered":"Jesse Manuel Figueroa: San Jose father sentenced to 25 years-to-life in prison for 2020 killing of 8-month-old daughter Raina"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN JOSE, Calif. — A San Jose man was sentenced to 25 years-to-life in prison Friday for killing his infant daughter by striking her so hard across the face that she suffered brain damage, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n

Jesse Manuel Figueroa, 36, was babysitting 8-month-old Raina when he took the child to a Mountain View fire station on July 4, 2020, according to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office.<\/p>\n

Figueroa told police he was taking her to a family barbecue when she mysteriously fell unconscious and blood began seeping from her nose, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n

She was taken to Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford where a bruise developed on the child’s left cheek “in the distinctive shape and size of an adult hand,” according to prosecutors.<\/p>\n

An autopsy found that the blow caused her brain to shift inside her skull and ruled her death a homicide, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n

MORE: San Jose parents convicted of murder in overdose death of 19-month-old daughter: jury<\/a><\/p>\n

“Raina would have been 6 years old today instead of a name on a murder case,” District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in a press release. “These cases break our hearts, at the brutality, at the senselessness, at the sheer loss of an innocent child.”<\/p>\n

Evidence at his trial showed that Figueroa had repeatedly beaten and strangled his girlfriend, Raina’s mother, and abused their other two children, ages 2 and 3, including by forcing them to kneel on rice, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n

At the time of the murder, he was under a restraining order that prohibited him from having any unsupervised visits with Raina, the District Attorney’s Office said.<\/p>\n

“The baby’s grandfather wrote in an impact statement: ‘Raina mattered. Her life mattered. She was not just a name in a case file. She was a baby who was deeply loved and who should still be here today,'” prosecutors said.<\/p>\n

\"Now<\/a>
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Copyright 2026 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, re-transmission or reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. Is prohibited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN JOSE, Calif. — A San Jose man was sentenced to 25 years-to-life in prison Friday for killing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":338532,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[139583,88,90,89],"class_list":["post-338531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-139583","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/338532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}