A state appellate court panel today ordered a new
sentencing hearing for a young woman convicted along with her boyfriend of the
slayings of four members of her adoptive family in Pico Rivera.

The three-judge panel from the 2nd District Court of Appeal ruled that a lower court judge should have granted a continuance to allow Monica Diaz’s attorney more time to prepare when she was re-sentenced in April 2007.

Here’s a bit about the case from Mayhem.net

August 12, 2000 – Monica Diaz & Michael Naranjo – Sixteen-year-old Monica Diaz and her 17-year-old boyfriend Michael Naranjo pleaded not guilty to the stabbing attack of her adoptive father and three siblings in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Pico Rivera. Diaz and Naranjo have been charged with four counts of murder and one count of attempted murder. During the hearing the patricidial teen never looked at her wheelchair-bound mother, Sylvia Flores, who was injured in the rampage. Flores adopted Diaz, her niece, as a toddler after her parents died in a car crash.