Mexican immigrant to go free after 14 years in jail

By Jeff Franks

HOUSTON (Reuter) A Mexican immigrant who was on death row in Texas for
nearly 14 years for allegedly killing a policeman was to be freed Wednesday
after the charges against him were dropped.
Harris County District Attorney Johnny Holmes told reporters Tuesday
that a decision Monday by Judge Frank Maloney to throw out several key
prosecution witnesses for lack of credibility left the state without a
case against Ricardo Aldape Guerra.
"Since the court suppressed the identification of six witnesses of
(Aldape) Guerra as the shooter, we do not think we should go forward with
the remaining evidence. It's a waste of time, effort and energy," Holmes
said.
A spokesman for the Mexican government said that Aldape Guerra, now
35, was in Harris County Jail awaiting his release and was expected to be
flown Wednesday to his hometown of Monterrey on a plane sent by the
governor of the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon.
Mexican Consul General Manuel Perez Cardenas said the delay was the
result of paperwork that had to be processed, including a formal request
by the Mexican government to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization
Service to expedite Aldape Guerra's departure.
Attorneys Scott Atlas and Stanley Schneider, who worked without pay for
five years to free Aldape Guerra, said their client became very emotional when
he learned his release was near.
"He said that after 15 years, he wasn't really sure how to feel," Atlas
said in a news conference. "He just wants to return to his family, his friends
and his life in Mexico. He knows it's going to be hard to restart his life,
but he wants to start as quickly as he can."
Atlas said Aldape Guerra thanked him for his work. "But I told him
that we should apologize to him for what happened here ... there is no way to
compensate a man for 15 years of his life," he said.
Aldape Guerra came to the United States illegally in 1982 to find
work, but soon found himself in a legal nightmare.
He was convicted in October 1982 of shooting to death Houston police
officer James Harris during a routine traffic stop in July 1982. He was
sentenced to death by lethal injection, but maintained from the beginning that
the killer was Roberto Carrasco Flores, a passenger in his car who died later
that day in a shootout with police.
In 1994, U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt threw out the conviction and
ordered a new trial because of police and prosecutorial misconduct. He charged
that police and prosecutors, in their zeal to avenge a dead cop, had become
"merchants of chaos" by intimidating witnesses into accusing Aldape Guerra and
manipulating evidence to assure a conviction.
The ruling was upheld in August by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of
Appeals and Aldape Guerra was moved from death row in Huntsville, Texas
to Harris County Jail to await a new trial.
On Monday, Maloney, after hearing motions ahead of a planned May 19 trial
for Aldape Guerra, agreed with the federal courts and said that six key
prosecution witnesses could not testify because their testimony had been
influenced by police. He also said there was "overwhelming evidence" to
indicate that Carrasco was the shooter, not Aldape Guerra.
In the face of that, Holmes said, a new trial "would be a virtually
impossible task and serve no purpose." In the past, he has repeatedly said he
thought Aldape Guerra was guilty, but backed away from that Tuesday.
The case became a cause celebre in Mexico where Aldape Guerra was the
subject of books, songs and movies. The Mexican government intervened directly
on his behalf, saying that he was not guilty.
Aldape Guerra's mother, Francesca Guerra de Aldape, called her son's
exoneration "a miracle from God" which she had prayed for everytime she
entered the courtroom.

REUTER