{"id":459099,"date":"2026-09-10T06:44:20","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T06:44:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/459099\/"},"modified":"2026-09-10T06:44:20","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T06:44:20","slug":"months-after-mistrial-oakland-murder-case-resolves-through-burglary-plea-deal-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/459099\/","title":{"rendered":"Months after mistrial, Oakland murder case resolves through burglary plea deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

OAKLAND \u2014 A murder defendant accepted a plea deal that avoided criminal liability directly related to the homicide, ending his case months after a jury was unable to convict or acquit him<\/a>, court records show.<\/p>\n

Marco Leiva-Saucedo, 23, was convicted only of illegal gun possession at his September 2025 murder trial. Finally, last May, he was sentenced to eight years in state prison after pleading no contest to burglary. He was transferred to Pleasant Valley State Prison on June 2, records show.<\/p>\n

Leiva-Saucedo had been accused of killing 25-year-old Johnathan Carballo, allegedly over an argument about loud music in August 2023. After his arrest six weeks later, Leiva-Saucedo admitted only to finding a pistol near the homicide scene<\/a> and insisted he didn\u2019t kill anyone, court records show. At his trial his lawyer argued he was innocent.<\/p>\n

Jurors were unable to agree on a verdict and a mistrial was declared. Leiva-Saucedo remained jailed while the plea deal was being negotiated and will receive credit for that time towards his eight-year sentence, records show.<\/p>\n

Before the deal was finalized, Carballo\u2019s family members submitted several victim impact statements about him. The letters focused on honoring Carballo\u2019s memory rather than commenting on the outcome of the case.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour absence hurts me,\u201d his mother wrote in a letter. \u201cMy soul is shattered because I cannot see you or hear your voice. I miss those nights when you would ask me to accompany you while you rode your bicycle to work, and we would video call so we could talk the whole way there. I do not know how to make my mind and my heart understand why this had to happen to you, my son, my beautiful boy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The same gun was used in a second homicide in September 2023, when a woman named Maricela Urias-Martinez used it to kill her ex-boyfriend. She was sentenced to six years in a plea deal<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OAKLAND \u2014 A murder defendant accepted a plea deal that avoided criminal liability directly related to the homicide,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":459100,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[861,862,143,145,5061,864,144,865],"class_list":["post-459099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-bay-area-crime","tag-california-crime","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-homicide","tag-oakland-murder","tag-oakland-news","tag-oakland-shooting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459099","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=459099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459099\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/459100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}