April 09, 2024 / By mobanmarket
SANTA MONICA, CA — A man convicted of breaking into a Santa Monica woman’s apartment, waking her and sexually assaulting her in a 45-minute attack in 2018 had his sentenced reduced on Thursday following a decision by a state appeals court.
Dylan James Jensen, now 46, was initially sentenced to 100 years to life in state prison in 2022. A three-judge state appeals court in January agreed with some of Jensen’s challenges to his sentence, ordering a lower court to reduce his sentences for forcible sodomy and forcible oral copulation and to either impose concurrent sentences on four of the charges or to “clarify the legal and factual basis for its discretionary determination to impose consecutive sentences on those counts.”
He was re-sentenced Thursday to 25 years to life in state prison.
Prosecutors said the court ruled that Jensen must be issued concurrent sentences instead of consecutive ones because the court found “he didn’t have time to reflect on his actions in between the different sex acts.”
Jensen in 2022 was convicted by a jury of forcible rape, forcible sodomy, forcible oral copulation, first-degree burglary and sexual battery in connection with the June 2018 attack, and found that he was sane at the time of the crimes.
Jensen entered the woman’s apartment on the 2900 block of 4th Street at about 6 a.m. through a sliding glass door of an elevated patio, police said at the time.
“The suspect retrieved a knife from the kitchen and proceeded to the victim’s bedroom while she was sleeping in her bed,” Santa Monica Police Lt. Saul Rodriguez said. “The victim was awoken by the suspect. The suspect forced himself on the victim and sexually assaulted her. The suspect then fled the location.”
The woman, who is in her 60s, immediately called 911 and officers located Jensen near Third Street and Ashland Avenue, Rodriguez said. The victim was able to identify Jensen as her attacker, the lieutenant said.
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Jensen was born in Hawthorne, might have been homeless at the time of the attack and was on probation for a narcotics conviction, according to Rodriguez.
The appellate court panel — which upheld Jensen’s conviction — noted that Jensen “did not dispute that he sexually assaulted” the victim, and that he instead pursued an insanity defense in which he claimed that he was delusional when he committed the attack and believed the victim was his wife.
The justices rejected the defense’s claim that the trial court abused its discretion by denying a motion by the prosecution to dismiss allegations of use of a deadly weapon under a directive issued by then-newly elected District Attorney George Gascón.
City News Service contributed to this report.
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