San Jose man gets 25 years to life for 2020 murder of infant daughter

SAN JOSE — A South Bay man was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison Friday for killing his 8-month-old daughter nearly six years ago after a police investigation determined he inflicted a fatal blow to her head.

Jesse Manuel Figueroa, 36, of San Jose, was convicted of murder in January in the July 6, 2020 death of Baby Raina. According to a San Jose police affidavit, an autopsy found that Raina had been hit in the head with a punch or slap that “caused Raina’s brain to dislodge and jostle around within her skull” while she was in the sole care of the defendant.

“Raina would have been 6 years old today instead of a name on a murder case,” Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in a statement Friday. “Today, we can only feel some sense of justice that this man will never hurt another child.”

In a statement included in a DA news release, Raina’s grandfather said, “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.”

According to a San Jose police investigation, on July 3, 2020, Figueroa was tasked with caring for Raina and her 3-year-old sister, who were two of the three children he shared with Raina’s mother. The next day, he arrived with the girls around 2:45 p.m. at his mother’s house in Mountain View, and “was in a state of panic” while holding Raina, who was “was unconscious and pink fluid was running from her nose,” authorities said.

Figueroa’s mother attempted CPR and they called 911; they then took Raina to a fire station, where CPR was again administered before paramedics took her to El Camino Hospital. The injured child was later transported to Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital in Palo Alto.

At the second hospital, medical staff noticed hand-shaped bruising forming on Raina’s head near her left eye, which reportedly was not visible to personnel at either the fire station or first hospital. Subsequent scans would reveal a one-inch indentation to her left temple and brain swelling. Raina died on July 6, 2020.

Authorities would later use the timeline of the bruising to allege that only Figueroa could have caused those injuries since they occurred when he had sole care of Raina. They would also cite it to refute his claims that the infant looked and acted normal prior to the initial emergency call; the state of her injuries would likely have rendered her unconscious and caused her to show signs of trauma including lethargy and loss of appetite. He also initially claimed to police that Raina “mysteriously fell unconscious and blood began seeping from her nose.”

On Feb. 17, 2021, seven months after Raina died, prosecutors charged Figueroa with murder. He was convicted after a two-month trial.

The police affidavit detailed a history of domestic and family abuse by Figueroa. Three days before Raina was born, he was arrested on suspicion of domestic violence, moved out of the family apartment, and was later served with a restraining order. Prosecutors would detail more abuse at trial, including claims that Figueroa abused Raina’s siblings, then 3 and 2 years old, by forcing them to kneel on rice.

Figueroa was still subject to the protective order when the children’s mother brought Raina and her sister to him for babysitting the day before the 911 call; police said she “told investigators that she had done this on several occasions despite the restraining order.”