Citing Vindictive Prosecution, El Paso Judge Dismisses Capital Murder Case

A Texas tri­al judge has dis­missed all charges against an El Paso mur­der defen­dant, say­ing that the deci­sion to seek the death penal­ty against him was a prod­uct of ​“pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al vindictiveness.” 

In an order issued December 14, 2021, District Court Judge Alyssa Perez (pic­tured) freed Ivan Gabaldon, dis­miss­ing his case with prej­u­dice. Gabaldon’s lawyers had argued that coun­ty pros­e­cu­tors had sought the death penal­ty against him in retal­i­a­tion for exer­cis­ing his con­sti­tu­tion­al right to a speedy tri­al by oppos­ing pros­e­cu­tors’ attempts to delay his tri­al after hav­ing mis­han­dled the case.

20-year-old Gabaldon was ini­tial­ly arrest­ed and charged with felony mur­der in the February 22, 2021 stab­bing death of 63-year-old Juan Garcia Flores dur­ing what media reports described as ​“a paid sex­u­al encounter.” His defense lawyers argue that he killed Garcia in self-defense after Garcia forced Gabaldon at knife­point to engage in acts to which he had not consented. 

On November 17, two weeks before a sched­uled December 2 tri­al, lead pros­e­cu­tor, Assistant El Paso County District Attorney Curtis Cox, informed the court that his office was not pre­pared for tri­al, had not locat­ed three wit­ness­es, and had not yet received the results of foren­sic tests. Acknowledging his office’s respon­si­bil­i­ty for being unready to pro­ceed, he offered to release Gabaldon with­out bond in exchange for a delay in the tri­al date. When the defense object­ed, Cox back­tracked and said he intend­ed to impan­el a new grand jury to indict Gabaldon for capital murder.

The grand jury returned a cap­i­tal indict­ment on November 22, elic­it­ing pub­lic crit­i­cism from El Paso State Representative Joe Moody, who accused pros­e­cu­tors of an ​“abuse of pow­er.” Moody tweet­ed: ​“For Texas to kill, it has to prove the per­son is such a future dan­ger that lock­ing them up for­ev­er won’t pro­tect us. Yet here, before threat­en­ing the death penal­ty, we have the pros­e­cu­tor agree­ing this guy should be out of jail until a new indictment.” 

Defense coun­sel moved to dis­miss the charges against Gabaldon. During a four-hour hear­ing on November 30, Perez said she could not under­stand how the pros­e­cu­tion could on the one hand say ​“that you would be seek­ing a poten­tial re-indict­ment and poten­tial­ly seek­ing the death penal­ty” against Gabaldon and on the oth­er hand say ​“we’re okay with let­ting him out on [per­son­al recog­ni­zance with­out] bond.” She con­tin­ued the December tri­al date and sched­uled deci­sion on the motion for December 14.

Dismissing the charges with prej­u­dice, Judge Perez said that ​“the defense has pro­vid­ed suf­fi­cient evi­dence that the re-indict­ment and the deci­sion to seek the death penal­ty was an unjus­ti­fi­able penal­ty result­ing sole­ly from Mr. Gabaldon exer­cis­ing his right to go to trial.” 

After the hear­ing, defense coun­sel Denise Butterworth exco­ri­at­ed the pros­e­cu­tion for a ​“repug­nant” attempt to ​“manip­u­late the jus­tice sys­tem.” She told reporters “[t]his case went from zero to a hun­dred because the bot­tom line is the state of Texas was not ready and when they were exposed for not being ready, in our opin­ion to buy more time, they threat­ened to re-indict and then seek the death penal­ty.” Butterworth con­tin­ued: ​“It was scary that that kind of pow­er was being abused. … [T]hank God,” she said, the law ​“allowed for the judge to step in and stop it.”