Carlson sentenced to 26 years in prison for 1984 Foothill High student murder

Steven Carlson was sentenced at an intense and emotional hearing Friday to 26 years to life in state prison for fatally stabbing a 14-year-old Foothill High School classmate 44 times in 1984, when he was 16 years old.

Carlson was convicted on Oct. 30 of first-degree murder for the death of Tina Faelz on April 5, 1984, but he claimed in court Friday that he’s innocent and his attorney, Annie Beles, said he had “an unfair trial from beginning to end.”

Faelz was killed on her way home from school and was found dead in a ditch adjacent to Interstate Highway 680, east of the high school. Both attended Foothill and Carlson lived near the murder scene.

The freshman girl usually took the bus home from school, but recently started walking home to avoid being teased by other students riding the bus, her mother, Shirley Orosco, said in a August 2008 interview with the Pleasanton Weekly.

The case remained unsolved for more than 25 years, but prosecutor Stacie Pettigrew said a 2011 DNA test showed that a small amount of blood that was found on Faelz’s purse was Carlson’s.

According to Pettigrew, the chances of that blood belonging to someone other than Carlson are only 1 in 5 quadrillion.

Carlson, who has a long criminal history, including convictions for committing lewd acts with a child under the age of 14 and assault, was arrested and charged with murdering Faelz in August 2011.

Pettigrew said in her closing argument in October that the DNA evidence proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Carlson is the person who killed Faelz.

Beles told jurors that they shouldn’t find Carlson guilty because the evidence is “flimsy” and there are many unanswered questions — which includes when the DNA evidence was collected, how it was collected, whether it was contaminated and whether it was improperly transferred.

She added that there are many innocent reasons to explain why Carlson’s DNA ended up on Faelz’s purse because they went to the same middle school and high school and “were in the same proximity with one another.”

In addition, there was no motive, fingerprints or a weapon that connected him to the murder.

At Friday’s hearing, Beles asked Alameda County Superior Court Judge C. Don Clay to throw out the jury’s verdict and grant Carlson a new trial, arguing that the DNA evidence shouldn’t have been allowed in the trial and alleging that Pettigrew engaged in misconduct by “diluting the standard of proof” for guilt.

“Let me tell you, it wasn’t fair,” Beles said.

But Pettigrew said Beles engaged in “a gross mischaracterization” of what she told jurors in her closing argument and “the jury got it right” by convicting Carlson after only one day of deliberations.

Clay denied Beles’ motion for a new trial and pronounced his sentence against Carlson.

Faelz’s stepfather, Steve Faelz, said, “Tina was a great kid” but “all of a sudden she was taken away from us and it was devastating and hurt our family tremendously.”

Ron Penix, Faelz’s biological father, told Carlson, “What’s not fair is that this little girl never reached her full potential and you’ve been able to breathe for the last 30 years.”

Penix said, “I hope that every second of every minute of every day you will feel the pain that Tina did in the last 30 seconds of her life.”

Beles objected to Penix’s comments, calling them “an insult,” and Carlson said, “I didn’t do it.”

Faelz’s brother, Drew Faelz, said he was only 8 years old when she died and he was so upset about it that, “I couldn’t sleep for months and years” and was “scared all the time.”

Referring to Carlson, Faelz said, “It’s time for me to pass the hurt on to him for the next 25 to 30 years” while he’s in prison.

Tina Faelz’s aunt, Karin Reiff, the sister of Orosco, said that when Carlson killed Tina he also killed her mother because she never recovered from Tina’s death.

Orosco died last February on the original date that Carlson’s trial was to begin, although it wound up being delayed until the fall.

Beles said Carlson has had drug problems, led a troubled life and committed crimes but she doesn’t think he’s a killer.

“Fundamentally he was a screw up more than he was an evil man,” Beles said.

When Carlson was arrested and charged in August 2011, his case originally was assigned to juvenile court because he was 16 at the time of the crime.

But on Jan. 12, 2012, a judge ruled that he should be prosecuted as an adult because of the degree of criminal sophistication he displayed in the killing, the severity of the crime and previous failed attempts to rehabilitate him.