CASE HISTORY​

​M and his friend, R and a female friend of M​'s​  named T drive to a nightclub in M’s car.  Several hours of heavy drinking later M and his female friend, T are ready to leave the nightclub.  On their way exiting the nightclub they are temporarily detained and questioned by security.  Another girl who was a friend of T’s and who had been sharing a table with them earlier claimed that her car was stolen.  Since they were sitting at the same table as the girl with the missing car security inquired if they knew anything about her car missing.  They said they did not and preceded to leave in M’s car. R is nowhere to be found.   M just assumed that he met up with a girl or some other friends and that he would run into him later at M’s house where R had left his car.  When M and T arrived at M’s house they see R driving the girl’s missing car.  T immediately began to question R, “what are you doing driving my friend’s car?”  M asked R to hand over the keys so that they could get her car returned but, he refused.  Then  M informed R that he could not leave the stolen car at his house and told him to drive it an apartment complex where they had lived before.  M reassured T that he planned to then later retrieve the keys from R to return them to T’s friend.  They followed R in order to give him a ride back to his own car which he had parked at M’s house.  On the drive back to R’s car T begins arguing with R about stealing her friend’s car.  They get back to M’s house and R gets out and then before M could leave to take T home R retrieves something from the trunk of his car which later turns out to be his gun and tells M that he wanted to ride with them.  T begins to argue with R some more over stealing her friend’s car.  In the midst of arguing with T, R begins to inquire about getting another set of plates for the car.  Just to temporarily appease R, thinking it will buy him time to possibly talk him into giving him the keys, M says that he will try and contact a friend of his that he thought had an extra set of plates.  M pages the friend and then drives down the road from the friend’s house (a place known to locals as the “Cliffs” and where later T’s body was discovered) to wait for his friend to page him back, signaling that he was at home and to come by.   While waiting for his friend to page him back, T begins to argue more with R and things just escalated between them further.....

 

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​Arrested...​



The next morning, M receives a page on his beeper from a number he did not recognize.  He calls the number back and the person that answers identifies themselves, Houston Homicide division.   They tell M that they need to speak to him and he immediately says okay and drives himself to the station. Yes,  anyone with even the slightest experience in criminal law would say that it is never wise to volunteer to go a police station for questioning  without an attorney (guilty or not).  However, he is just barely 19 at the time and like most kids, still naively believes as long as you are innocent you do not have anything to worry about.  However,  he soon realized that his assumption was wrong.   They handcuffed to a bench and proceeded to assault him, hitting him upside his head and punching him in stomach, demanding he confess.   Looking back he does regret not taking the opportunity to the the truth but, he had just seen seen someone brutally shoot and kill and someone and feared what they would do to him if he did tell the truth.  Instead, he asked for a lawyer and was told that they could not get one until Monday.  This occurred on a Friday and they proceeded to question him and assault him throughout the weekend.  They even made him take a lie detector test at some point over the long extrenous hours of questioning and he passed.  

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 He does make one mistake and that is not taking the opportunity to tell the truth when he was first questioned.  Instead, fearing consequences at the hands of the ACTUAL guilty person he tells them that he does not know anything and that he and R drove T home and that is the last he saw of her.  In the meantime the police arrive at ​R’s house and when he opens the door and see’s the police, he immediately lays on the floor and tells them his gun is in the cabinet and almost immediately begins to “confess,” sorta.

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Meanwhile M is still being held and is still being questioned.  When they present him with a signed statement/confession from R that stated that M was the shooter he then tells the police the truth.   They were both arrested and charged with murder.   However, by the time M went to trial the DA made a deal with R, if he agreed to testify against M they would reduce his charges to “attempted murder.”   



Why did the DA decide to make a deal?  R’s family was able to afford him a high profile experienced attorney whereas M was not so lucky.  In a high profile media case as this one had become the prosecution is under extra pressure to gain a conviction and sadly, doesn't really matter “who” they convict.. just as long as “someone(s)” is. 



• There was no physical evidence linking either of them as the shooter...i.e. DNA  fingerprints and/or other witnesses.​



• In short.. they had nothing to go on other than that the two of them were pointing the finger at each other. ​



• Therefore, It is easy to speculate that they made the decision to go up against the weaker side, M and his not so experienced attorney in order to insure their best chances at getting a conviction.



1ST TRIAL



PROSECUTION’S ARGUMENT



MOTIVE?



In the 1st trial R’s testified that M shot her because M accused T of “coming on R.” In  R’s testimony during the 2nd trial he claimed that M  shot her because he feared that she would go to the cops about the stolen car.  Because she “knew too much.” However,  M did not take part in stealing the car and his alibi to attest to that was in fact T, which gave him no reason to want her dead.



“UN”SOLID EVIDENCE



The police recovered shell casings from two different guns from the scene but, all the bullets retrieved from her body only came from one gun.  The gun that allegedly  belonged to M but, was not registered to either of them.  The other shell casings that were found off to either side of her body came from a gun that R admitted to being his.  When asked why they also found shell casing from his gun he claimed that M “intimidated” him into shooting at her also but, he intentionally shot on either side of her body, missing her on purpose.  It is important to note that R was not only twice M’s size and also almost 10 yrs older,AND was also in possession of his OWN gun!  SO, HOW WAS HE INTIMIDATED??



WHAT IS WRONG WITH R’S TESTIMONY??



• According to R’s testimony M shot T because she “knew too much about the car theft.”  If that was the case then why didn't he take her home first before meeting up with R who according to R, M knew that he had stole the car because according to R, M gave him the keys, allegedly.  Why would he knowingly take T with him to meet up with R in the stolen car if he was concerned about her “knowing too much??



**The jury in his first trial was not told that the “star witness” that testified against him had originally also been charged with murder in the same case. Nor were they told of the deal that R had made with the DA which entailed, in exchange for his testimony against M his charge would be knocked down to "attempted murder." I guess because he had not been "officially convicted" the prosecutor used the gray area of "innocent until proven guilty" as clause to leave out these details  He was "officially convicted of attempted murder" 6mos later and received a 10 year sentence.  Because the jury had not been informed of these details in 1996 M was granted a 2nd trial under the  Accomplice-Witness Rule**.

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