Capital murder convict Gabriel Gonzales returned to the same Bexar County courtroom Monday where a jury condemned him to die 13 years earlier for killing a pawn shop owner during a botched robbery.
But this time with his previous sentence now voided by an appellate court he was instead ordered to serve life in prison for the same crime.
Gonzales, 35, will have to serve 27 more years before he can be eligible for parole, but it's unlikely a parole board would ever let him see freedom again, appellate attorney Michael C. Gross said outside the courtroom.
"My client is very grateful to the complainant's family for agreeing with the special prosecutor not to go forward with the death penalty," he said.
Gonzales was a 20-year-old member of the Crips gang who was known as "Capone" when he and 4 others were alleged to have stormed into Louella Hilton's Austin Highway store on the morning of June 20, 1994.
During his 1997 capital murder trial, prosecutors described him as the one who planned the heist in an attempt to gather more guns for his gang. He was also accused of serving as the trigger man shooting Hilton 3 times through a closed door as she dashed for a 12-gauge shotgun in her office.
At his 1st punishment hearing, prosecutors described a lengthy criminal history and produced a letter they said Gonzales wrote from jail in which he pledged to kill a witness.
But what jurors didn't hear were allegations that as a child he had been sexually abused by his father. Without that potentially mitigating evidence, they didn't have a full enough picture to decide whether to take his life, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled in 2006. While the conviction remained, a new sentencing hearing was ordered.
Gonzales' arms were bound by a chain around his waist and he wore an orange Bexar County Jail outfit as he briefly stood before 144th District Court Judge Catherine Torres-Stahl, who approved the new sentence.
Special prosecutor Raymond Fuchs took the case because Susan Reed, who now serves as district attorney, was the 144th court judge during the 1st trial. Fuchs said outside the courtroom that he still hasn't seen evidence that molestation ever occurred.
But given the age of the case, difficulty in tracking down witnesses again and other potential appellate issues, a plea agreement for a life sentence seemed the best solution, he said.
"I did talk to (Hilton's) family about it and explained what I thought all the problems were," Fuchs said. "They agreed they'd rather have closure than for it to continue on."
Hilton's family was not in attendance at the hearing.
Source: San Antonio Express-News, Feb 2, 2010
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