Yolo DA wants own doctors to evaluate Dominguez before new trial in Davis killings
Yolo County prosecutors want their own doctors to evaluate Carlos Reales Dominguez’s mental state ahead of a scheduled second trial in January in the 2023 Davis knife attacks that left two men dead and a woman grievously injured. A judge will hear the request next month.
Yolo jurors in June failed to reach a verdict after a months-long trial in the killings that paralyzed Davis in late April and May 2023. Dominguez, a student at UC Davis, had been expelled from the university in the days before the April stabbing deaths of David Breaux, 50, and Karim Abou Najm, 20, at Davis’ Central and Sycamore parks. A third stabbing followed nights later in early May 2023 when an unhoused Kimberlee Guillory, then 64, was set upon while in her tent near downtown.
Dominguez, in Yolo Superior Court on Thursday before Judge Samuel T. McAdam, had been diagnosed by doctors with the symptoms of schizophrenia and spent months at a state hospital to regain his ability to stand trial. He pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to the murders and the attempted murder of Guillory in October 2024. Yolo County District Attorney’s Office said it would not pursue the death penalty in the case.
Friends, roommates, family and mental health experts testified at trial to Dominguez’s mental decline in the months before the knife attacks. Dominguez, too, took the witness stand at trial testifying for several days to the shadow figures he saw and voices he heard before the Davis park killings.
Dominguez remains held in Yolo County Jail.
Yolo County prosecutor Matthew DeMoura on Thursday requested that the District Attorney’s Office convene its own three-doctor panel of experts to evaluate Dominguez. McAdam set a Nov. 20 date to hear the motion after rejecting an earlier motion filed Oct. 6 by DeMoura for failing to meet the 10-day timeline before Thursday’s hearing.
McAdam questioned the timing of the prosecutor’s motion, noting it came a year after Dominguez’s insanity plea, months after jurors deadlocked, and well after court-appointed doctors had concluded Dominguez suffered from severe mental illness.
McAdam also countered prosecutor DeMoura’s characterization of medical experts as “defense doctors,” restating that the court-appointed and Yolo County Jail doctors who testified at trial were independent experts.
DeMoura said prosecutors were ensuring experts were qualified and able to perform mental health evaluations as well as pore over transcripts, digital evidence and the approximately 8,000 pages of discovery presented at the last trial. If McAdam grants the motion, DeMoura said he anticipates a report on any findings in mid-December
“We are reevaluating what a second trial is going to look like,” DeMoura said. “We believe some evidence has not been taken into full consideration by the experts.”
McAdam gave DeMoura a Nov. 5 deadline to file the request. The second trial is scheduled to start Jan. 20.
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