Jury selection continues in the case of former UC Davis student Carlos Reales Dominguez, who was charged in connection with a 2023 stabbing spree that left two people dead.
Prosecutors charged Dominguez with the murders of 50-year-old David Breaux and 20-year-old Karim Abou Najm in late April, and the attempted murder of 64-year-old Kimberlee Guillory in early May.
Dominguez’s case has had a long journey through the court system. He was initially found incompetent to stand trial after being diagnosed with schizophrenia. The case was then put on hold in August 2023 as Dominguez was sent to a state hospital to receive treatment.
The criminal trial was then reinstated in 2024 after doctors declared that Dominguez’s competency was restored.
But last June, a mistrial was declared after the jury found Dominguez not guilty of first-degree murder, and deadlocked on the remaining charges of second-degree murder and attempted murder. Prosecutors have decided to retry the case.
Mike Vitiello is a Distinguished Professor of Law at McGeorge School of Law, and spoke with Insight Host Vicki Gonzalez about what Dominguez’s retrial could look like.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Interview highlights
It's been three years since these deadly stabbings happened. Give us a recap; how complex of a case is this?
It's an extremely complicated case, partially because initially the defendant was found incompetent. What's incompetency? [It’s] not the same as insanity; incompetence means you simply cannot provide assistance to your attorneys. You don't fully appreciate the proceedings. But through compelled medication, he's rendered competent.
[During] the trial he was acquitted on the first-degree murder charges probably because the jury really didn't think he could form the intention, or the premeditation or deliberation, to commit first-degree murder. They couldn't come to a unanimous verdict on the second-degree murder charges.
You can still act with intention, as long as it wasn't premeditated or deliberate, and be guilty of second-degree murder, or you could act with reckless disregard. There's nothing inconsistent about a determination that he wasn't found guilty of first degree murder.
Most of the jurors in the first trial voted to acquit Dominguez of second-degree murder and attempted murder. Did that come as a surprise to you?
I think so. I was not in the courtroom [but] I have a sneaking suspicion that the jury was a pretty sophisticated one, and that the defense must have done a pretty good job. Jurors don't tend to like insanity defenses; it's a hard one to win. There's a general sense that, “oh my god, we're just going to let this person back on the street.” That of course is not true. I think this is as good a trial as you will see in a small county like Yolo.
Why is Dominguez being retried now?
First of all there’d be no double jeopardy on the charges that were not reached, where you have a hung jury. That's why they can proceed. I am not quite sure why the DA's office was intent upon bringing the charges again. I have a couple of theories about it.
This is a crime that really created a great deal of impact in Davis. My own contact with the case is that the second murder occurred within about 50 yards of where I live. The suspect was captured about two blocks from where I live. My wife and I lived through the kind of tension and anxiety that was taking place in Davis.
Plus, it's very hard to explain to members of the public and certainly to members of the victims' families why a jury might not convict. And so there's a certain element of trying to help the families really deal with their loss.
Could there have been a change of venue?
That’s a possibility. Finding another venue is easy enough [but] it's hard to win a venue transfer. What they'd be looking for is a similar community but one where the people hadn't heard so much about it. In a case like this, there are a lot of people in the area who are prospective jurors who would have heard about the case, but that's not a disqualifier. The disqualifier is whether they nonetheless couldn't be fair in assessing the merits of the case. And I think there are a lot of people who are fair-minded enough to know, “I know about the events, but I really haven't formed a final judgment. I'll listen to the evidence.”
Do you think this retrial will face similar challenges as the first trial, or will there be some key differences?
One of the interesting things is that there's a new strategy by the prosecutor. The first time around one of the critical things [was]: were the homicides the result of the mental illness? In the first trial, the prosecutor said, "no, this was a breakup. He was angry because his girlfriend had broken up with him, because he was having academic difficulty." There is a new strategy… about the fact that the resulting insanity was a product of marijuana use. Historically, in our system, if you commit a crime based on self-induced intoxication, you can still be found guilty of some form of murder.
Part of the problem is it's been very hard to get experts to testify to Dominguez's sanity. He was found incompetent; a court-appointed psychologist found that he was having a schizophrenic break. So the prosecutor has a pretty heavy burden to try to show — despite their pretty strong evidence of a schizophrenic break — that nonetheless he's capable of murder. We'll see how that plays out.
Is this a common strategy in court?
Not so much marijuana, although as everybody knows, the marijuana of my generation is not the same marijuana that young people have access to today. This much higher THC content can presumably cause much more severe psychological responses.
The much more common area where you might have the prosecutor point out the substance use is alcohol. But alcohol and violence are routinely associated with one another. Acting in severe intoxication doesn't exonerate you from second-degree murder, for example. It might reduce the charge from first-degree to second-degree murder.
I think the public may have trouble understanding the pieces of a trial like this because they're quite complex. There's the guilt and innocence determination; if the jury finds that Dominguez is guilty of second-degree murder, then there will be the affirmative defense of insanity. It's this two-step dance. He has to be guilty of the crime initially, and then nonetheless he could be found not guilty by reason of insanity.
Dominguez has pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity. What is the difference between these two?
Not guilty can be for lots of reasons. The most common would be, “I didn't do it at all.” Typically when you're pleading not guilty by reason of insanity, you're saying, "I did the act, but I didn't have the mental competence to do it." And the standard is fairly high; it's not a get-out-of-jail-free card. The defendant will carry the burden to show that he did not understand the nature and quality of his conduct… that he was so delusional.
Public misperception about the insanity defense is much misinformation… There's a lot of misunderstanding about how easy it is to win on an insanity defense. And then again, if you're found not guilty by reason of insanity, then you go to a mental health facility. Very often that period of incarceration will very often be a substantial period of time.
Do you think he'll take the stand during this retrial?
I think he has to. He did in the first case. One of the amazing things for those who are skeptical about whether he was delusional when he committed his crimes is to look at different photographs around the time of his arrest, and then to see him at trial.
My guess is that he is articulate and credible enough so that an open-minded jury could certainly find him either not guilty or not guilty by reasonable insanity.
If Dominguez is found not guilty, acquitted, or another hung jury happens during this retrial, what happens after this?
First of all if he’s acquitted, then he walks. If there is a hung jury, then in theory the prosecution can decide to retry, and then they would obviously try to maintain custody.
At some point, especially depending on what the split is in the jury — if there is a very strong “acquit” division in the jury — then it becomes less likely there would be a retrial. A very close vote, say 10-to-2 to convict, then the prosecutor would certainly think, “maybe it's time to retry.”
