Man’s life term cut to 45 years in 2001 killing
WEST PALM BEACH — A 34-year-old former Greenacres man, serving a life sentence for the 2001 fatal shooting of a Lake Worth construction worker, on Monday was given a chance to one day live outside prison walls.
Palm Beach County Judge Barry Cohen resentenced Joel Vasquez to a 45-year term for firing a shot that killed 48-year-old Bernardino Claros, who was riding his bicycle on a Lake Worth street. With credit for the nearly 18 years he has already spent behind bars, Vasquez could be released when he is 61 years old.
Vasquez was entitled to be resentenced because he was 17 when he and Wilson Perez decided to shoot the Bolivian man who, prosecutors said, came to the United States looking for a better life. Vasquez and Perez planned rob Claros, prosecutors said.
Under two landmark U.S. Supreme Court decisions, juveniles can’t be sentenced to life without parole. Because they are impetuous, don’t fully understand the consequences of their actions and are amenable to rehabilitation, they must be given the chance to try to prove they can return to society, the high court ruled.
Vasquez was offered a plea deal that would have sent him to prison for 25 years. Instead, he opted to let a jury decide his guilt. A jury in 2001 convicted him of first-degree murder and attempted robbery with a firearm, and he received a life sentence.
Perez, also of Greenacres, took a plea deal and was handed a 19-year sentence. He is to be released from prison in November 2019.