El Paso juries returned not guilty verdicts in several criminal cases, including unrelated trials involving charges of murder and sexual abuse of a child.

An El Paso jury also acquitted a woman of intoxicated manslaughter and convicted her of misdemeanor driving while intoxicated in a fatal 2021 crash, while another woman was sentenced by a jury to five years in prison after being convicted of intoxicated manslaughter in a 2023 fatal crash.

The verdicts were all reached in the past two months.

“The state of Texas wins more cases than we lose,” El Paso District Attorney Bill Hicks said. “But ultimately, we are taking cases to trial because that’s our job — to seek justice and to hold people accountable for their actions. If a jury chooses to find someone not guilty or say, ‘state, you didn’t prove your case beyond a reasonable doubt.’ That’s fine. That’s the jury’s job. We still move forward because victims deserve justice. Our community deserves justice, and we continue to seek justice in our courts. We can’t back down.”

Hicks pointed out his office has received guilty verdicts and lengthy sentences on several capital murder and other cases within that same time period including:

• Marvin Lake, capital murder, life in prison

• Alexis Dominguez, capital murder, life in prion

• Eduardo Garza, capital murder, life in prison

• Jose Salazar, manufacturing and distributing cocaine, 30 years in prison

Man found not guilty of murder in driveway stabbing death

Brandon Snell, now 24, was found not guilty by a jury May 9 of murder in connection with the stabbing death of 28-year-old Raul Gerardo Zamora.

Zamora was found June 23, 2022 by neighbors dead in a pool of blood in the driveway of his home in the 11000 block of Cannon Hill Drive, El Paso Police Department officials and court documents state.

Zamora was seen arguing with someone on the phone, saying that he would be waiting for the person outside the night before he was found dead, prosecutors said during a 2022 bond hearing.

On July 4, 2022, Snell was arrested after an incident on a residential street a couple of miles from his home. He was allegedly driving recklessly, speeding into a cul-de-sac full of children on Passage Place and causing a resident to yell for the kids to get out of the way, a complaint affidavit states.

He allegedly told the neighbor, “”I am a killer! I am a killer!” while waving the gun around, the affidavit states.

Snell went to trial May 7 and was found not guilty by a jury two days later.

“First and foremost, there was no DNA,” Snell’s attorney Rebecca Tavitas said. “There was no fingerprints. There was no weapon. In addition to the fact that the state had done the cellphone tower locations and Google locations, but the information that they obtained did not fit the timeline.”

The only evidence in the case was circumstantial evidence, Hicks said. No one saw Snell commit the killing, but prosecutors argued there was enough circumstantial evidence to connect him to the murder scene.

“It’s very difficult when you have a circumstantial case,” Hicks said. “You need a lot of circumstantial evidence to try to connect those dots to get a jury to believe beyond a reasonable doubt in a murder case. The jury obviously felt that we didn’t have enough evidence or didn’t connect all of those dots for them, but we felt like we did.”

The evidence included phone records placing Snell at the scene during the time of the murder and witness statements that Snell and Zamora were arguing the night of the slaying.

Tavitas said the case never should have gone to trial.

“Had they (state prosecutors) taken a closer look at their evidence, they would’ve realized that their timeline didn’t match and would have known that they should have evaluated the case a little bit better,” Tavitas said.

Hicks countered prosecutors took the case to trial because he believed they had strong enough evidence and wanted to get justice for the Zamora’s family.

“I think you have to take every case to a jury,” Hicks said. “If you were murdered tomorrow, would you want that case to be prosecuted? Of course you would. Certainly, Raul Zamora’s family wanted his case prosecuted.”

Man acquitted of sexual abuse of a child allegations

Jesus Ortiz-Gutierrez was found not guilty by a jury May 16 on several counts of sexual assaulting a girl.

Ortiz-Gutierrez was accused of sexually abusing a 9-year-old girl. The victim reported the alleged sexual abuse in 2018.

The jury deliberated for less than 30 minutes before reaching a not guilty verdict.

“We believed the complaining witness in the case,” Hicks said. “We believed her to be very credible. Unfortunately, the jury wanted more evidence in the case. What makes criminal charges on child sexual assault cases so difficult is that the vast majority, almost all child sexual assault cases, are cases of ‘she said, he said.'”

The key witnesses — a nurse and the victim’s mother — presented by the district attorney’s office in the case had previously been caught lying on other abuse cases, said Brian Rodriguez, then a public defender representing Ortiz-Gutierrez and now a lawyer with The Carter Law Firm.

“I always thought my client was not guilty because there was zero physical evidence of anything that had happened,” Rodriguez said. “Absolutely not. This should have never gone to trial. A detective testified there wasn’t any evidence of sexual assault. The nurse was proven in civil court of being a liar. The mother had made false abuse allegations before. There was no evidence that my client did this.”

Driver found not guilty in wrong-way freeway crash

Deborah Sanchez was acquitted April 10 by a jury of intoxicated manslaughter in connection with a 2021 fatal crash that killed Eyob Demoze Fetene, 33, of Arlington, Virginia. She was convicted of a misdemeanor driving while intoxicated charge.

Sanchez made a U-turn on Interstate 10 West and hit a center concrete divider. She continued to drive east in the westbound lanes of traffic, court documents state. As she allegedly drove on the wrong side of the freeway, she crashed into Fetene’s 1999 Nissan Altima. The cars crashed head-on, causing Fetene’s car to go out of control. Fetene’s car was hit by another vehicle. Fetene was taken to an El Paso hospital, where he later died.

The main question facing the the jury was who caused the fatal crash. State prosecutors argued Sanchez was drunk and driving on the wrong side of the road, while defense attorneys argued both drivers were drunk at the time of the crash, Hicks said.

“Sanchez was driving the wrong way on the interstate and she ended up having a head-on collision,” Hicks said. ” If she hadn’t have done that, would this accident have happened? We think that it’s pretty clear if she hadn’t have been driving at the recklessly high speeds that she was driving the wrong way on interstate, this accident would not have happened.”

The jury found Sanchez not guilty of intoxicated manslaughter, but convicted her on a misdemeanor charge of driving while intoxicated. The jury sentenced Sanchez to a year in state jail. She was given credit for 77 days she had already spent in jail.

Sanchez was represented by Christopher Hernandez and the El Paso Public Defender’s Office.

“The key evidence in Ms. Sanchez’s trial was the rush to judgment,” El Paso Public Defender Kelli Childress said. “The case involved a tragic accident between two impaired drivers. The jury found no evidence that Ms. Sanchez was responsible for the death of the other driver. Ms. Sanchez was facing up to 20 years in prison on the overcharged case, when the actual crime she committed carried a maximum of one year in jail.”

Woman gets five year sentence for intoxicated manslaughter

Cassandra Yolanda Hernandez was convicted by a jury May 1 of intoxicated manslaughter in the August 2023 fatal crash that killed Alondra Soriano Rojas, 40, of San Elizario, on the César Chávez Border Highway in the Lower Valley.

Hernandez was driving a 2020 Chevrolet Sonic eastbound at a high speed when she hit a 2017 Chevrolet Tahoe from behind, causing the Tahoe to then crash into the right-side guardrail, roll and slam into a large metal pole, police said at the time of the fatal crash.

Rojas, who was a passenger in the front seat of the Tahoe, died at the scene. Hernandez was allegedly driving more than 100 mph across all lanes of traffic, a complaint affidavit states. She told police she was bar hopping with friends before the fatal crash.

A jury found Hernandez guilty of intoxicated manslaughter and gave her a five year prison sentence. She was facing up to 20 years in prison.

“I think that there are some issues in that case, which may have given the jury some pause,” Hicks said. “The defendant had a 2-year-old son. The defendant’s father had gone to prison. The mother had overdosed. I think the jury was feeling sorry for the defendant based on the circumstances of her life.”

Hernandez’s sentencing is an example of “empty chair syndrome,” Hicks said. The term is used to describe when jurors see a defendant in the courtroom and see the impact of the crime on the defendants’ life, while the deceased victim in the case is never seen by the jury.

“From the beginning of trial, all the way through, a good defense attorney does a good job of making their client look sympathetic,” Hicks said. “A jury has a hard time convicting someone that looks friendly, looks nice, looks sweet. They have a hard time putting that person in prison. Day in and day out, the jury is living with the defendant in the courtroom throughout the whole trial, and they’re not living with that empty seat that we have at the table, which is for the victim.”

Hernandez was also represented by Christopher Hernandez and the El Paso Public Defender’s Office.

“Ms. Hernandez had wanted to accept responsibility and enter a plea of guilty in her case from day one,” Childress said. “However, she was given an unreasonable plea offer from the district attorney, so she opted to plead guilty to a jury instead. The sentence she received was less than half of what the DA had offered her.”

The district attorney’s office did not have strong evidence against Sanchez or Hernandez in their respective cases, Childress said.

“The district attorney’s office misjudged the strength of both cases, and were seeking unreasonable outcomes,” Childress said. “Clearly the juries agreed with that. We believe both outcomes were fair and appropriate. Attorney Christopher Hernandez, who handled both of those matters, did an outstanding job presenting the full stories to the juries. Going to jury trial in those matters was exactly the right thing to do.”

Aaron Martinez may be reached at amartinez1@elpasotimes.com or on Twitter @AMartinezEPT.

This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: El Paso juries acquit defendants in murder, sexual assault cases