Two Filipinos on California death row named in governor's clemency plan - GMA Network

NEW YORK — Filipinos Adel Sambrano Ramos and Sonny Enraca are among 548 people on death row in California whose sentences Governor Gavin Newsom plans to commute to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Ramos has identified San Nicolas, Ilocos Norte, as his hometown. Enraca was born in the Philippines, according to court records.

Sacramento police Officer Tara O'Sullivan, 26, had been on the job for about six months when she was killed on June 19, 2019. She had responded to a domestic disturbance on Redwood Avenue in North Sacramento and was helping a woman gather her belongings so she could leave the house when Ramos opened fire with a rifle. The woman was unharmed.

Police said the continued gunfire prevented officers from reaching the wounded O'Sullivan for about 45 minutes. Officers used an armored vehicle to reach her and rushed her to UC Davis Medical Center, where she died. Ramos surrendered after a standoff that lasted about eight hours.

Ramos pleaded guilty to murder in August 2024. The first jury to consider his punishment deadlocked, prompting a second penalty trial. A second jury returned a death verdict in March 2025, and a Sacramento County judge formally imposed the sentence on June 27, 2025. During the proceedings, Ramos's brother testified about their childhood home in the Philippines.

Enraca was sentenced to death in Riverside County on July 23, 1999, for the first-degree murders of Ignacio Hernandez and Dedrick Gobert. The two men were shot during a fight in a pizza parlor parking lot following street races in November 1994, according to the California Supreme Court's opinion. A jury also convicted Enraca of assault with a deadly weapon for shooting Jenny Hyon, who survived but was left paralyzed from the chest down.

Enraca told investigators he believed Hernandez and Gobert were about to shoot him. His defense argued that he had acted in self-defense. The California Supreme Court upheld his convictions and death sentence in February 2012. The court's opinion states that relatives raised Enraca in the Philippines until he was eight and that he held a US green card at the time of his arrest.

Newsom imposed a moratorium on executions in 2019. California last carried out an execution in 2006. If the proposed commutations take effect, the recipients' convictions will remain in place, and they will remain in prison without the possibility of parole.

The governor's office said 382 of the proposed commutations require approval from the California Supreme Court because the recipients have more than one felony conviction. The official list uses an asterisk to identify those cases.

Ramos and Enraca are named on the governor's official list of 548 intended clemency recipients. — VDV, GMA News