BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) -- A California City cold case murder conviction in 2023 has been overturned by an appeals court due to a possible lack of attention to the defendant's mental competency.

With that reversal of fortune, 64-year-old Jose Lara was back in a Kern County courtroom on Wednesday.

In 2023, Lara was found guilty of killing Desiree Thompson, a California City woman who disappeared 10 years earlier. However, a judge's mistake has now reversed that conviction.

"I'd give my life for my daughter, I wish it had been me and not her. But that's not the case," said Sheri Smith, Thompson's mother.

Lara was arrested in 2022 after a man and his father told police Lara bragged about killing a woman in 2012. The FBI dug up the backyard of a home Lara used to rent and found Desiree

See Full Page