CAMPBELL — The family of a man shot to death during a chance roadside clash on a Campbell street in 2021 is decrying a plea agreement reached earlier this month that yielded a voluntary manslaughter conviction and what stands to be a short prison sentence for the shooter.
Greg Cirimele, 42, died Nov. 2, 2021 on West Sunnyoaks Avenue after a brief confrontation with 18-year-old Nickolas James Ammann, who had been driving by and was waved down by a walking Cirimele, apparently for driving too fast.
Cirimele approached the driver’s side of Ammann’s car; within seconds, Cirimele was shot three times and lay gravely wounded on the street while Ammann drove away.
“If that isn’t cold-blooded murder, I don’t know what is,” Kim Cirimele, Greg’s mother, said in an interview with this news organization.
But the ultimate assessment by the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office and Ammann’s defense attorney — as well as Judge David Cena — did not treat the case as so clear-cut. On Feb. 14, Cena approved a negotiated disposition in which Ammann pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter and a sentencing enhancement for using a gun, which yielded him a nine-year prison sentence.
After accounting for the nearly two-and-a-half years that Ammann has been held in county jail, sentencing guidelines indicate he could be eligible for parole after serving between three and four years in prison. The formal sentencing hearing is scheduled for March 20.
Kim Cirimele bristled at the judge’s explanation to her family that plea agreements in general are necessary to keep courts from being overtaxed by trials.
“What is going on in the courts?” she said. “We’re very dissatisfied that they pled this out.”
Deputy District Attorney Carolyn Malinsky said in an interview earlier this month that “complex facts and evidence” stood in the way of a murder conviction. That included witness testimony and video evidence showing Cirimele taking his shirt off and yelling and advancing toward Ammann’s car.
“I empathize with the family, and the pain and frustration they must feel. Losing someone in this violent and sudden manner is heartbreaking,” Malinsky said. “Sometimes you reach a resolution that doesn’t make everybody happy. We are trying to find the just result based on those facts and the law, and our standard of proof in a jury trial. The fair and just resolution was voluntary manslaughter.”
Similarly, Ammann’s attorney Lindsey Dazel told this news organization that “I believe we have come to a fair disposition.”
Kim Cirimele, who along with her family objected to the plea agreement and implored Cena not to approve it, said the penalty does not adequately reflect that her son was unarmed and that Ammann was illegally carrying a loaded gun in his car.
“We’re talking about murder. We’re talking about a loss of life,” she said.
Signs that a plea agreement might be in the offing surfaced during the preliminary hearing in December, in which Cena ruled that there was probable cause to move forward with the initial murder charge filed by prosecutors. But the judge also gave credence to a factual basis for a self-defense argument.
That appears based in part from an argument, drawing on an initial witness account, that Greg Cirimele could be seen with his hands inside the driver’s side window of Ammann’s car, creating an “unreasonable but honest belief of fear of serious bodily injury,” by Malinsky’s telling.
Kim Cirimele and her family object to that characterization, pointing to how the confrontation lasted no more than three to four seconds and there was no significant evidence that Ammann was struck.
“Greg never even had a traffic ticket on his record. He was a very proud father of two beautiful girls. He was a friend to everyone,” Kim Cirimele said. “He was always there to help you, counsel you, and make you a better person. He was the fun of every function that you went to.”
“In the end, my son served life and (Ammann) got 5.94 years,” she added, referring to the technical amount of time Ammann has to serve in prison before becoming parole eligible. “It’s not even close.”
