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Tentative Settlement Reached In Sara Kruzan Case

Earlier this year, prosecutors agreed to reduce Sara Kruzan’s first-degree murder charge to second-degree, which made her eligible for parole.
Earlier this year, prosecutors agreed to reduce Sara Kruzan’s first-degree murder charge to second-degree, which made her eligible for parole.

A deal may be in the works in the case of Sara Kruzan, who was sentenced to life in prison as a teenager for killing her pimp.

Tentative Settlement Reached In Sara Kruzan Case
Prosecutors and defense lawyers are scheduled to meet with a judge later this week.

Court papers state that Riverside County prosecutors and Kruzan's lawyers have reached a tentative settlement in the case.

The California Supreme Court returned the 18-year-old case to Riverside last summer for a hearing. Kruzan's attorneys have pushed for her release or at least a new trial. They say evidence that she was a victim of intimate partner violence by her pimp should have been laid out at her trial. Kruzan says her pimp molested her at 11, raped her at 13 and forced her into prostitution. She killed him when she was 16.

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A jury convicted her of murder and a judge sentenced her to life without the possibility of parole in 1995. Her former defense attorney David Gunn, now a judge in Riverside, has said he was unaware at the time that the law allowed for Kruzan to receive a sentence with the chance of parole because of her age. Kruzan spent a part of her childhood in San Diego.