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LAKEPORT, Calif. – On Wednesday a Clearlake woman convicted of the shotgun killing of her boyfriend was given a prison sentence that likely will result in her spending the rest of her life in prison.
Judge Michael Lunas sentenced Dominique Irene Molina-Dominguez, 34, to 50 years to life in prison for the murder of 38-year-old DeAndre Grinner.
Lunas explained during the hourlong sentencing hearing that Grinner’s murder was part of a larger pattern of domestic violence that he had suffered at Molina-Dominguez’s hands.
Last month, a jury convicted Molina-Dominguez of first-degree murder, and found to be true special allegations of causing great bodily injury with a shotgun, personally discharging a shotgun and use of a firearm in connection with a felony.
At trial, the District Attorney’s Office presented evidence that Molina-Dominguez laid in wait for Grinner at their Clearlake home and killed him on July 10, 2024, with a single shotgun blast to the chest.
The motive in the killing, as explained by Lunas during the sentencing hearing, was Molina-Dominguez’s jealousy over Grinner being romantically involved with other women.
Molina-Dominguez originally was set to be sentenced on Tuesday afternoon by Lunas, who presided over her two-week trial, which stretched from the second week of January into the first week of February.
However, as that hearing began, Molina-Dominguez – dressed in a black and white jail jumpsuit and clutching a manila envelope – stood up at the defense table, where she had been seated with her defense attorney, Farris Purviance, and made a verbal Marsden motion to have Purviance removed from the case.
A Marsden motion, based on the 1970 case People v. Marsden, allows for a criminal defendant to seek to have their court-appointed attorney removed and replaced by another. To be successful, the defendant has to prove their attorney either has a conflict of interest or isn’t providing adequate representation.
Marsden motions also require confidential hearings. As a result, Lunas had to stop the sentencing hearing and immediately ask everyone outside of court staff to leave the courtroom.
After a 20-minute Marsden hearing, Lunas reconvened court and announced he had denied Molina-Dominguez’s motion for a new attorney but was granting her other relief.
That relief was in the form of giving Molina-Dominguez and Purviance additional time to go over the Probation Department report on her suggested sentence and the court’s sentencing procedures. That resulted in the hearing being continued until 10 a.m. Wednesday.
Family speaks of loss
During the Wednesday morning sentencing hearing, Chief Deputy District Attorney Rich Watson introduced members of Grinner’s family who gave victim impact statements to the court.
As they gave their statements, Molina-Dominguez did not look at them, but instead stared at the floor.
Grinner’s cousin, Jasiah Sufi, first read a statement from her mother, Alecia Sufi, who called Molina-Dominguez “a very cruel woman” who slandered Grinner by calling him abusive, which she maintained he never was to a woman.
She faulted Molina-Dominguez for not being regretful or remorseful. “Our family has endured so much pain and loss, and then this happens,” she said. “We will never see him again.”
Alecia Sufi recalled visits to Lake County to spend time with Grinner, but now when she comes to the county she’s reminded of his murder. “Imagine getting a phone call that your cousin got a hole blown through his body,” she wrote, adding that for him to die that way was “unthinkable.”
She asked the court to impose the maximum sentence on Molina-Dominguez so she didn’t do the same thing to someone else.
Jasiah Sufi also read a letter to the court from Grinner’s sister who said he had a big heart and a generous spirit.
“There is no apology big enough, no sentence long enough to bring him back,” she wrote. “His love was stronger than your violence. You will not define him,” adding, “his spirit will live on forever.”
Sufi, in offering her own statement, said she grew up with Grinner, who was always her favorite cousin. She lost her brother last year and not having Grinner’s support was hard. His son also has to be raised without a father.
“You’ve shown no remorse. You haven't said sorry not one time. You painted him to be such a horrible person, which he never was. You should have told the truth,” Sufi said, facing Molina-Dominguez.
Grinner had another sister who died last year of cancer, Sufi said.
“The world has no place for humans as horrible as you because you would do it again if you had the chance to,” Sufi said. “We will never get our cousin back. We will never get our brother back.”
Sufi said Molina-Dominguez had options, but showed her premeditation by texting Grinner and telling him, “You’re a dead man.”
“You’re horrible. You’re pitiful,” Sufi said to Molina-Dominguez.
Isaiah Rashad Cook, another of Grinner’s cousins, thanked the court and the prosecution for working hard on the case.
“Deandre was more than a name and a case file. He was family. He was someone who mattered deeply to the people who loved him,” said Cook.
Cook said Grinner’s death has left a permanent hole in his family that cannot be filled.
As he spoke, Sufi and other family members wept in the audience.
Discussing the facts of the case
Watson asked the court to follow the Probation Department sentencing report to give Molina-Dominguez a sentence of 50 years to life.
Purviance asked Lunas to instead sentence her for manslaughter, not murder, arguing that there was insufficient evidence to show that Molina-Dominguez planned to kill Grinner.
Watson, however, said the difference between what Purviance requested and what the jury found was in Molina-Dominguez’s state of mind. There was ample evidence, he said, to show Molina-Dominguez had a malice state of mind, and that there was planning of the killing ahead of carrying it out.
That planning included retrieving the shotgun from a cabinet and texting Grinner days before to tell him that he deserved “a six foot bed and a hole in your head.”
“The jury got it correct” with finding she had a malice state of mind, Watson said.
Lunas, who said he sat through the trial and heard all of the evidence, then laid out the reasoning for the sentence he intended to give in the case.
The defense was justifiable homicide in self-defense with claims of provocation and heat of passion. However, Lunas said based on hearing the evidence, he concluded, “The jury got it right.”
Molina-Dominguez had said Grinner had kicked one of their dogs. However, Lunas said a shotgun blast to the chest was not a reasonable response to someone kicking a dog. Additionally, there was no evidence that Grinner had kicked the animal but had moved it, causing it to whimper.
The real motivation for the killing, as Lunas explained, appeared to be Grinner’s involvement with one or more other women while dating Molina-Dominguez. He also referenced the texts Molina-Dominguez sent to Grinner before the shooting telling him he was a “dead man walking,” that he deserved to be “put down” and a picture of someone with a bullet between their teeth.
Lunas said there was significant evidence from a Ring security camera which showed a confrontation between Molina-Dominguez and Grinner the day before his killing in which it showed Molina-Dominguez as the aggressor.
She initiated a physical confrontation with Grinner, hitting and pushing him and throwing rocks. In the video, Molina-Dominguez showed no fear of Grinner, who did nothing to assault her. Lunas said he was just trying to get his property from the home.
“She’s angry, she’s hostile, it wasn’t about the stuff, it was about something else,” said Lunas, noting that Grinner had a substantial injury from that confrontation, and that there was a reference in the case to him being stabbed the day before his death.
Evidence at trial stated that the couple later spent that night together and were intimate then and again the next morning. Then something went bad after Grinner was talking with another woman.
A week before his death, the couple had reportedly had another incident in which Grinner had allegedly thrown a pine cone that broke an item of Molina-Dominguez’s personal property.
Lunas said she claimed he punched her in the mouth several times; in the audience, Grinner’s family members shook their heads in disagreement with that claim.
The jury, Lunas said, could reasonably conclude that was not credible because Molina-Dominguez had no physical injury.
Particularly significant, Lunas said, was that she loaded the shotgun that she used to kill Grinner a week or so before the murder. Before that, it hadn’t been loaded.
“She has a whole week to think about that loaded shotgun and what she’s going to do the next time there is a confrontation between them,” Lunas said.
He said there was no call by her to law enforcement to support Molina-Dominguez’s statement to detectives that there was an aggravated history of assault and violence against her.
Grinner didn’t have a history of physically abusing Molina-Dominguez, but Lunas said there was clearly substantial evidence of her anger and hostility toward Grinner because of his involvement with other women.
For all of those reasons, Lunas said he found the jury’s verdict that Molina-Dominguez was guilty of premeditated first-degree murder was right and he denied the defense’s motion for reconsideration of the judgment.
Lunas noted that, according to the law, his discretion in sentencing was limited.
State statute gives a 25 years to life sentence for murder, and the Probation Department recommended another 25 years to life for the special allegations.
While he had the discretion to strike one or more of those enhancements, Lunas chose not to do so for a specific reason.
“This is a case of pure and simple domestic violence,” he said, adding that people tended to forget it was domestic violence because it was murder.
For that reason, he said he was persuaded that it was appropriate to not strike any of the firearm enhancements, although he stayed two of the enhancements and didn’t add more time to the sentence.
Lunas reserved restitution to Grinner’s estate and to the California Victim Compensation Board, and said Molina-Dominguez gets 603 days of credit for presentencing custody. When, and if, she eventually gets out of prison, she will be required to serve time on parole.
After informing Molina-Dominguez of her right to file an appeal within 60 days, Lunas remanded her to custody to be transported to state prison.
“Ms. Molina, good luck,” Lunas said as he concluded the hearing and rose to leave.
Molina-Dominguez was moved from the defense table to the jury box. As Grinner’s family filed out of the courtroom, for what appeared to be the first time she looked up at them and watched them leave.
Email Elizabeth Larson at elarson@lakeconews.com. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, and on Bluesky, @erlarson.bsky.social. Find Lake County News on the following platforms: Facebook, @LakeCoNews; X, @LakeCoNews; Threads, @lakeconews, and on Bluesky, @lakeconews.bsky.social.
