Newsom orders parole board to reconsider release of San Francisco home invasion rapist

April 18, 2026

California Governor Gavin Newsom has ordered the state parole board to reconsider its decision to free an HIV+ rapist who broke into a San Francisco woman’s apartment and attacked her in her bed in the middle of the night.

Roberto Detrinidad was jailed for life for the August 2013 attack on the woman, who had just moved to the city.

He won parole January 6 in a decision that sparked outrage and prompted Republican lawmakers to demand Newsom fire the commissioners who approved his release.

A newly released statement reveals Newsom told the parole board last week to reconsider whether its two-member panel made the right call.

“At his hearing, the panel found that Mr Detrinidad demonstrated sufficient insight into his risk factors and presented improved relapse prevention plans,” wrote Newsom. “I ask the full board to determine whether Mr Detrinidad’s progress is sufficient to support his safe release on parole.”

Unlike murder cases, where he can reverse parole decisions outright, Newsom’s referral for ‘en banc’ review represents the limit of his authority in sex crimes.

Detrinidad’s case will likely be heard during the board’s May 19-20 meetings.

The victim and her housemate had returned home to their Sacramento Street apartment in the early hours of August 8 2013 after finishing a bartending shift. She noticed a man across the street pacing back and forth and looking “jittery” who she saw from the window was still there as she went to bed.

That man, Detrinidad, then broke into the apartment building, entered the woman’s third floor apartment, pulled her pajamas and underwear down while she was sleeping and sodomized her.

“I broke into the front gate [which] was really easy for me to open because I found a piece of plastic to jiggle to lock open, Detrinidad told his January 6 parole hearing.

“The second door, all you needed to do was put a finger on the inside of the tongue depressor of the lock and I went upstairs and the front door of the apartment was unlocked,” he added.

“When I saw her in the window, it was attractive to me,” Detrinidad explained. “Honestly I looked at the door of the building. I saw that I could get in there easily. I started a plan that if I could get in there, have my way with her and get away, that was my plan.”

“That time in my life I had been going through some things that brought me kind of low,” he said, when asked to account for his actions.

“I was not feeling good about myself and my pattern was using things like risk taking, boundary breaking, making myself feel powerful. So I didn’t have to feel the low that I was feeling, right?”

“This was like my Super Bowl of crime that night. This was gonna be the thing that made me finally feel like a man.”

The victim testified at trial that she was no longer able to live in the apartment and that she was under the care of a therapist. She left San Francisco in 2016.

“This was a horrific life crime that resulted in the victimization of a woman who was alone, asleep in her bed, [who had] never met the inmate before,” prosecutor Andrew Clark told the hearing.

“And he targeted her and he broke into her house with the intent to rape her and did rape her.”

“That sexual violence is of great concern to us at the district attorney’s office here in San Francisco.”

While the victim attended two earlier parole hearings, at which she expressed misgivings about Detrinidad’s release, she did not attend on this occasion.

“I lost my sense of security. I don’t know if that’s something that I’m ever going to get back,” she told commissioners in 2019. “I don’t think that he fully understands what his actions have done.”

“I think that he knows what he has to say and what he has to do to get what he wants. But I don’t believe that he’s remorseful and I don’t think he’s going to stop.”

Presiding commissioner Michael Ruff and deputy commissioner Cristina Guerrero deliberated for 21 minutes before announcing their decision.

“The panel has concluded…that the mitigating factors outweigh the aggravating factors and find that Mr Detrinidad does not pose an unreasonable risk to public safety and is therefore eligible for parole,” Ruff said.

“Our decision in no way excuses his behavior in the life offense where he acknowledges that his actions affected the victim for a significant period of time,” he added.

Detrinidad remains incarcerated in San Quentin prison pending the outcome of the en banc review.

Update: at its meeting on May 20 the board voted to order a rescission hearing which is tentatively scheduled for September 2026.