Sentencing set for multiple felony defendant in Lemon Grove stabbing

A judge March 29 set sentencing for May 11 for Michael Thomas Bruno, 45, after he was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon for stabbing a man outside a Lemon Grove bar.

Deputy District Attorney Andrew Aguilar said Bruno faces 25 years to life plus another 15 years because Bruno has been convicted of two serious felonies and has been to prison before. 

A judge March 29 set sentencing for May 11 for Michael Thomas Bruno, 45, after he was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon for stabbing a man outside a Lemon Grove bar.

Deputy District Attorney Andrew Aguilar said Bruno faces 25 years to life plus another 15 years because Bruno has been convicted of two serious felonies and has been to prison before. 

An El Cajon Superior Court jury convicted Bruno of inflicting great bodily injury to a 26-year-old man who was stabbed in the abdomen, shoulder, and elbow outside the Copa Cabana Bar & Grill, at 7826 Broadway on Aug. 16, 2015. 

The man was a stranger to Bruno, but he failed to show up for trial as a witness, so the prosecutor presented testimony of others who were there and sheriff’s deputies who investigated the stabbing. Both men exchanged words with each other before Bruno stabbed him.

Bruno was on probation for possessing drugs while in jail in 2013. He was previously convicted of two burglaries, robbery with a knife in 1990, and possession of heroin. He remains in the George Bailey Detention Facility without bail.

Notorious death row inmate dies of natural causes

A death row inmate, Bernard Lee Hamilton, 64, died of natural causes March 26—37 years after committing one of East County’s most notorious murders in which a mother was dismembered and left in Pine Valley in 1979.

Hamilton suffered from several illnesses and was in a Sacramento secure medical facility when he died, according to the Department of Corrections.

Hamilton was 27 years old when he fatally stabbed Eleanore Buchanan, 24, in the abdomen after burglarizing her van. Her head and hands were cut off and left in Pine Valley off Interstate 8 where a target shooter found her remains on May 31, 1979.

Hamilton, a minister’s son, was arrested weeks later in Oklahoma while in possession of Buchanan’s van and credit cards. While in jail, Hamilton wrote Buchanan’s husband, saying his wife had joined Hamilton and another man on a trip to Oklahoma.

Hamilton was convicted of first-degree murder on March 2, 1981, by a San Diego Superior Court jury as well as the special circumstances of murder during a burglary, kidnapping, and robbery.

Hamilton was on death row at San Quentin State Prison from 1981-1994 until the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the sentence and ordered a new penalty phase while affirming the murder conviction.

Hamilton returned to San Diego and argued as his own attorney in 1995, but the second jury also recommended the death penalty, and he was sent back to death row in 1996. His appeals were based on the 1995 retrial and the California Supreme Court affirmed the death sentence in 2009.

The victim’s husband died of a heart attack at age 42, and the couple’s children went to live with his parents in 1994.

Executions have been temporarily halted since 2006 following problems with deadly drugs that expire, and finding doctors who were willing to assist in executions. An appeals court has been studying the methods of executions on the question of whether they pose “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Since California resumed executions in 1978, 13 people have been executed. The Department of Corrections said 70 death row inmates have died from natural causes and 25 have committed suicide. There are 747 offenders, mostly men, who are now on death row.