Sammy Nunez’s case delayed after he fires lawyer in sex crimes case ahead of prison time

Once the leader of a powerful Stockton nonprofit, Samuel Nunez appeared in court Friday to learn how much time he’d spend behind bars after being found guilty last month of sexual assaulting two children.

Instead, he fired his attorney.

Moments after the hearing started in the downtown Stockton courtroom, Nunez — who appeared in a red jail jumpsuit and glasses alongside his attorney Aaron Villalobos — formally asked to delay his sentencing.

He then indicated he wanted to fire Villalobos on the grounds that Villalobos supposedly had not counseled Nunez effectively in his case. The judge allowed the move after a brief discussion behind closed doors.

Sammy Nunez, founder and former director of Fathers and Families San Joaquin, is led out of Department 6C of the San Joaquin County Courthouse in downtown Stockton on Jul. 28, 2023 after a hearing after being found guilty of sexually abusing two young people in his family.

Villalobos would not comment after court on the reasons behind Nunez’s request.

The Modesto-based attorney’s termination isn’t the first shake-up among people handling the highly sensitive case.

In June 2021, shortly after Nunez was charged, Stockton’s state Assembly representative Carlos Villapudua urged the California Attorney General to take over the case from the San Joaquin County District Attorney’s office, then led by former District Attorney Tori Verber Salazar.

Villapudua claimed Verber Salazar had personal ties to Nunez that created a conflict of interest and would prevent her from prosecuting him effectively.

The Attorney General’s office told Verber Salazar to continue with the case, according to the spokesperson for the DA’s office at the time.

Several months later, in January 2022, Judge Xapuri Villapudua recused herself from the case, online court information shows.

Prosecutor Theresa Stroud also appears to have asked for Judge Bernard Garber disqualified from the case on the basis of prejudice against the defendant. It’s unclear from online court information whether the request was granted.

Nunez’s arrest in May 2021 on charges of sexually abusing his relatives shook the community and the wide-reaching organization Nunez founded, Fathers & Families of San Joaquin.

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Nunez, now 48, and his then-wife founded the nonprofit in 2006 with a promise to heal people and communities most impacted by incarceration, crime and intergenerational trauma.

By then, Nunez’s abuse of two girls in his family, both under 15, had already gone on for years, prosecutors argued at trial.

By the time of his arrest over a decade later, Nunez’s nonprofit had become intertwined with local governments and agencies, including through several agreements with San Joaquin County.

After his arrest, Fathers & Families cut ties with Nunez. The nonprofit closed permanently shortly after.

Nunez may choose to appeal his case, a move sometimes proceeded by a request to change attorneys like the one Nunez made on Friday, according to Blair Goss, a Sacramento-based criminal defense attorney.

“That’s the most common road to an appeal,” Goss said.  “It’s probably strategically the best move a defendant could make at that point.”

This article originally appeared on The Record: Sammy Nunez fires lawyer minutes before he was set to head to prison