What Fred Santos wants most, he knows he can never have.

"Give me back my son and you can have all the lawsuits," the Concord father said in a phone interview this week. But in lieu of a miracle that would restore his boy, Santos wants justice on his slain son's behalf. So far, that hasn't happened either.

In one of his last acts in office, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger commuted the 16-year sentence of a man who pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in the 2008 stabbing death of Fred Santos' son, 22-year-old Luis Santos, who was a student at Mesa College in San Diego.

The ex-governor later told Newsweek magazine that he reduced the sentence of the convict, Esteban Núñez, to seven years as a favor to a friend - the defendant's father, former state Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez. Earlier, when a Los Angeles TV reporter asked Schwarzenegger to explain the commutation, the former governor - who had repeatedly avoided the question - bristled. "You are boring the hell out of me." So when a letter from Schwarzenegger arrived at the Santos' Concord home expressing sincerest apologies for failing to notify the family beforehand of his decision, the words rang hollow.

"It gave some lame, condescending excuse about how we didn't understand the law and how he and Maria felt bad and were praying for us," Santos said. "Some PR firm wrote it for him. I don't even think he knew what it said."

Luis Santos, called Lu by friends and family, was killed on the campus of San Diego State University in a fight started by Núñez and his friends. They had taken a road trip from Sacramento to party.

The Santos family is challenging the ex-governor's actions in court on the grounds that they violated Marsy's Law, a voter-approved initiative that requires victims and their families to be notified of any post-conviction change in a sentence.

At a court hearing in Sacramento earlier this week, Santos, a pensive, soft-spoken software engineer who doesn't have friends in high places, erupted after hearing Núñez blame everyone but his own son for the events that led to his lawsuit against the former governor and the state. Núñez told reporters that from the start his son's case had been politicized - used as a prop by a grandstanding district attorney with aspirations of higher political office.

"They picked on my son from day one," Núñez said outside a Sacramento courtroom. For good measure, he implied that the Santos family's suit was inappropriate and a waste of taxpayer funds.

The elder Núñez was a pretty good amateur boxer in his day, and Schwarzenegger's tough-guy status has been confirmed in movies and bodybuilding competitions dating back 40 years.

But if either one thought they could kick sand in Fred Santos' face, like the old Charles Atlas ads, they are sadly mistaken.

"They plea-bargained this case and everything went the way the law should have gone, and then came the politicians, and they undid everything," Santos said.

It certainly wasn't the Santos family that decided to make political hay out of the case. That was all Núñez's and Schwarzenegger's doing.

"This whole case has been politicized by him (Núñez) and no one else," Santos said.

"His son is a criminal, and this case had nothing to do with him until he inserted himself time and time again - as a politician, not a father," he added. "The justice system did not fail us. The political system did."

Despite anger, frustration and a profound sense of loss, Santos has shown a level of respect to Schwarzenegger's personal family problems that the ex-governor has not shown to his.

Santos has declined to weigh in on Schwarzenegger's extramarital affair and the child the ex-governor fathered and kept hidden from the public - and his own family - for more than 15 years.

"I can't talk about that," Santos said. "There's a family involved, and it's a tragedy."

And family tragedy is something that three years after the slaying of his son still hits close to home with Santos.

"Who will stand up for my son?" he asked. "He was my only son."