Solomon Peña sentenced to 80 years for shootings at homes of elected officials

A federal judge on Wednesday sentenced Solomon Peña to 80 years in prison for orchestrating a string of shootings at the homes of four Democratic elected officials following his loss as a Republican candidate for the state Legislature.

U.S. District Judge Kea W. Riggs also chastised Peña for his apparent lack of remorse for crimes that led a federal jury in March to convict Peña of 13 felonies in the case.

“This is a case that had no reason to happen,” Riggs told Peña minutes before handing down his sentence. “It boils down to your ego. You could not accept the fact that you lost a race for the House of Representatives.”

Peña, who ran in the 2022 election for the District 14 seat, couldn’t believe “that he had lost an election” and initially pressured members of the Bernalillo County Commission not to certify the results of the election, Riggs said. On Jan. 6, 2021, he traveled to Washington, D.C., to participate in the pro-Trump rally that turned violent.

Peña exacted a “sophisticated scheme of revenge” in enlisting two “politically unsophisticated” co-defendants, Demetrio Trujillo, 43, and his son, Jose Trujillo, 24, to shoot up the Albuquerque area homes of two Bernalillo County commissioners and two state legislators, in some cases endangering children, Riggs said.

“You did it with glee and you did it with excitement,” she said. “It is beyond a miracle, as I said before, that nobody was hurt or killed.”

Peña, 42, stood before the judge Wednesday in handcuffs and shackles and wearing a green prison uniform. He declined to make a statement before his sentencing.

At Peña’s trial in March, prosecutors said that on Jan. 3, 2023, Jose Trujillo fired 12 rounds from a fully automatic machine gun at the home where state Sen. Linda Lopez and her 10-year-old daughter slept. Peña himself fired once before his gun jammed.

Two targets of the shootings made statements Wednesday, speaking of the lasting impact of the attacks and their continued desire to uphold the democratic process.

“Our lives are changed forever,” Lopez told the judge. She and her children have undergone counseling since the shooting. “We can’t enjoy fireworks anymore. We listen for any noise at night. The shooting of our home shattered what I was trying to provide for my children.”

But she added, “Our democracy must not bend to fear.”

Other elected officials targeted in the shootings were Bernalillo County Commissioner Adriann Barboa, former county commissioner and now state Sen. Debbie O’Malley, and House Speaker Javier Martínez, D-Albuquerque.

“Today is about accountability,” Martínez’s wife, Diana Martínez, testified Wednesday. “The harm was real and the trauma has not ended.”

Martínez said she found bullet holes in her garage and her shower after the shooting. Javier Martínez didn’t speak at the hearing.

During her testimony, Lopez told the judge, “I lived the horror.”

“I heard those gunshots hit my home, knowing my children were in the home,” she said.

Both of the Trujillos pleaded guilty earlier this year to multiple federal charges connected to the shootings. In May, two months after Peña’s trial, the judge sentenced Demetrio Trujillo to 15 years in prison and his son, Jose Trujillo, to 37 months.

The Trujillos testified at trial that Peña conspired with them to shoot up the elected official’s homes between Dec. 4, 2022, and Jan. 3, 2023.

Peña’s attorney, Nicholas Hart, told the judge Wednesday that Peña maintains his innocence and intends to appeal his convictions.

Hart also asked Riggs to sentence Peña to the mandatory minimum sentence of 60 years in prison, arguing that some killers and sex offenders received federal sentences far shorter than 60 years.

Riggs rejected Hart’s arguments, saying that the mandatory minimum sentence would hold Peña accountable for only a portion of his criminal convictions.

“You stand there with absolutely no remorse for what you have done,” Riggs told Peña. Riggs also fined Peña $250,000, noting that she had reviewed a statement showing that he has “significant financial assets.”

Federal prosecutors asked the judge to sentence Peña to at least 90 years in prison.

“The defendant stands before this court not accepting an ounce of responsibility for his actions,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeremy Peña, who isn’t related to the defendant.

In a sentencing memorandum filed last week, prosecutors argued that a 90-year sentence would help deter others tempted to use violence to achieve political ends.

“The terror that those officials and families felt was real — but his real target was the American political system,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office wrote in the memorandum. “He attacked the principle that citizens should be able to run for and hold public office without fear of violence.”

Prosecutors also cited Peña’s attempts to eliminate his co-defendants by offering a car and $10,000 to any inmate who could kill Jose or Demetrio Trujillo, for which Peña was convicted of three counts of solicitation to commit a crime of violence.

The case was prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Mexico, and the U.S. Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section. That criminal division was created after the Watergate scandal to handle public corruption prosecutions, but has been significantly downsized by attorney resignations and terminations since President Donald Trump took office, according to news reports.

The trial attorney from that section, Ryan Crosswell, who has been praised by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Mexico for his “significant assistance” in the Peña prosecution withdrew in February before Peña went to trial.

Crosswell resigned in protest after top officials at the DOJ directed the public integrity section to support the dismissal of an indictment against New York City Mayor Eric Adams — without a proper review of the case’s merits, news reports state. He was replaced by William Gullota, a trial attorney with the same section, based in Washington, D.C. Gullota didn’t attend Wednesday’s sentencing hearing in Albuquerque.

The DOJ on Wednesday didn’t return a Journal request for comment about the Peña case.