Cedeño was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the D.R. for his involvement in the young woman's death, basically for having a gun on him at the time, and for allowing the woman to get hold of it and then struggling with her to get it back (inadvertantly leading to her death.) He didn't help his case any by waiting several hours after the incident before reporting anything to the police, Ted Kennedy style. He apparently thought it better to go home and get everything straight with his wife first. His statement that he panicked in the aftermath because he was worried about his baseball career (while not mentioning concern for the woman, her family, etc. initially) might not have gone over too well, either.
At any rate, Cedeño got off light, only having to pay a small fine.
That incident happened in December of 1973. I don't recall if it was specifically cited at the time, but I am guessing alcohol was involved, as well. Cedeño was known from th get-go as a late night carouser and a heavy drinker by some people's standards. He had several subsequent run-ins with the law over the years, almost all of them involving alcohol in one way or another.
I never bought the theory the shooting incident had something to do with his "decline". The truth is that Cedeno played his best baseball ever the first 2/3 of the 1974 season, the one immediately following the shooting. By the beginning of August, 1974, Cedeño was hitting .309/.371/.542, with 22 HRs and 82 RBIs, 67 runs, and 38 steals. That projected to full-season totals of 37 HRs and 137 RBIs, 112 runs scored, and 63 stolen bases. A terrific season, especially when one considers he was putting up those numbers in the mid-1970's Astrodome, as arid and trackless a hitter's graveyard as there was anywhere in baseball at the time.
But then Cedeño slumped badly, hitting only .188/.274/.297 the last two months of 1974. I always suspected some injury occurred that he tried to play through. Or it could have been all the late nights, or that perhaps he was really 28 instead of 23 (there were rumors even at the time Cedeño first came up as a 19-year-old phenom that he was anywhere from two to five years older than he claimed to be.) Actually, Cedeño had several very good seasons in Houston after the shooting incident, the main difference being he never hit for much power again after August of 1974. Which is why I wonder if he didn't injure a shoulder or something around then. If he was going to cave in emotionally from the trauma from the shooting, if he even suffered from any, it seems to me he would fall off in every aspect of his game, not just one specific category.
