The verdict
A Riverside County jury found Alexis Yahir Duran guilty of second-degree murder for the 2023 shooting death of 17-year-old Adam Pineda. Jurors deliberated for about four days and returned the verdict Friday morning, MyNewsLA reported. Duran, 22, faces a minimum sentence of 15 years to life in state prison.
The jury rejected the case’s sentence-enhancing firearm and great-bodily-injury allegations. MyNewsLA reported that those allegations, had they been found true, would have doubled Duran’s sentence. Riverside County Superior Court Judge Jerry Yang set sentencing for Dec. 18 at the Riverside Hall of Justice, according to MyNewsLA.
The disputed evidence
The prosecution’s trial account said Duran had become familiar with the handgun before the shooting. At a December 2023 preliminary hearing, Detective Daniel Cline testified that Duran said he fired toward Pineda while believing there was no bullet in the chamber, according to MyNewsLA’s report on the pretrial proceedings. The defense argued the death was accidental and amounted, at most, to involuntary manslaughter. The judge at that hearing ruled there was a basis for the murder charge because Duran knew the firearm and understood the danger if it fired, MyNewsLA reported.
At trial, prosecutors presented autopsy evidence that the gun had been fired from several feet away, rather than at close range. That evidence challenged the defense’s account of an accidental close-contact discharge, according to Palm Desert Patch.
Firearm-transfer rules and the legal distinction
The California Department of Justice says private-party firearm transfers generally must go through a licensed dealer using the Dealer’s Record of Sale process. That general rule does not establish how the handgun in this case was transferred or whether the transfer was lawful; the verified guidance cited here does not resolve the age restrictions or exceptions applicable in February 2023. The Judicial Council of California’s CALCRIM instructions include an instruction on involuntary manslaughter.
The prosecution’s account of the shooting
The incident details here are prosecutors’ account, drawn from a District Attorney’s Office trial brief and reported by MyNewsLA and Patch. Prosecutors said Duran and Pineda, friends since elementary school, and Duran’s younger brother stopped on Wide Canyon Road in Sky Valley on Feb. 4, 2023, while on their way to a party. The group fired rounds outside the Jeep with a 9mm handgun Duran had acquired through social media about three weeks earlier.
According to the trial-brief account, Pineda handled the pistol and passed it back to Duran, who pulled the trigger and struck Pineda in the head. Duran and his brother took Pineda to Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs and carried him into the emergency room. They later left the Jeep in a nearby parking structure and got a ride home; Pineda was pronounced dead moments later, according to MyNewsLA’s account of the trial brief.
Prosecutors said Duran initially told Pineda’s girlfriend and uncle that Pineda had shot himself accidentally. He later told detectives he had thrown the gun into desert scrub near where the Jeep was parked; a search did not find it, according to MyNewsLA.
