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July 28, 2011
Mistrial declared in 2009 kidnapping case
After a juror refused to continue to deliberate today, state District Judge Brenda Kennedy declared a mistrial in the aggravated kidnapping case of Charles Butcher II, accused of snatching a 9-year-old girl on her way to a South Austin bus stop in 2009.
Butcher, 44, remains in jail on $600,000 bail. Prosecutors have vowed to retry him.
Jurors leaving Kennedy’s court this evening said they were extremely frustrated that the case did not end in a conviction for Butcher. They said that one man on the panel agreed with Butcher’s defense lawyers, who argued that he was guilty of a lesser offense but not of aggravated kidnapping, a first-degree felony punishable by life in prison.
The juror “didn’t want to be there,” and grew more aggravated with the process as the deliberations wore on, said juror Ben Martinez.
“He was almost unintelligible,” said juror Mike Elkins. “He didn’t understand our charge.”
It is possible for a jury to continue deliberating a case with only 11 members, but the state and defense must agree to it. Butcher refused to consent, giving Kennedy no choice but to declare the mistrial.
The jury began deliberating about 10:30 a.m. Kennedy declared the mistrial about 5 p.m., lawyers said.
The girl, who is now 11, testified that while walking to the bus stop in the early morning hours of September 24, 2009, she saw a man who appeared to be checking his truck tires on the side of a private road leading from her family’s condominium community to Brodie Lane.
The girl, who was a Cowan Elementary student at the time, said that after she passed the man, he grabbed her, put his hand over her mouth and held a small kitchen knife near her throat. She said he threatened to kill her if she screamed as he forced her into the truck and drove her to his nearby apartment.
She said the man tied her hands and put her in the closet of a bedroom in his apartment, where he gave her food two times. Later in the day, she said, he dropped her in the same area where he had earlier taken her after she told him that her mother would call police if she did not come home after school
She said the man did not touch her inappropriately.
The girl’s descriptions of the man who took her, his car and his apartment led police to Butcher, prosecutor Beverly Mathews said. A police affidavit said officers’ familiarity with Butcher, who is in a database of previous sex offenders, helped them link him to the case.
The girl’s DNA was found on an eating utensil in his apartment and on a small knife in his truck, Mathews said.
According to court documents, Butcher has a history of crimes against children that dates back to 1991, when he was stationed in Korea with the U.S. Army.
Those documents, filed by prosecutors, said Butcher was convicted in Korea of several crimes after kidnapping two children and attempting to kidnap another. Butcher sexually assaulted two of the children, who were between the ages of 9 and 11, the documents said.
Butcher also has previous convictions in Ohio, including for attempted kidnapping with a gun in 1995 and for criminal child enticement in 2004, the prosecutors’ filing said. Alex Calhoun, one of Butcher’s defense lawyers, conceded during closing arguments that his client kidnapped the girl but said there was not strong enough proof that he used a knife, he said.
Calhoun said he argued that instead of aggravated kidnapping, a first-degree felony punishable by life in prison, Butcher should be found guilty of kidnapping, a third-degree felony. Because of previous convictions, Butcher would face up to 20 years in prison if convicted of the lesser charge.
On his way from the courthouse, Elkins, one of the jurors, said: “I’m glad they’re going to do it again.
“My last words to (prosecutors) were ‘Get him.’”
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November 15, 2010
Jury selected in murder trial
A jury of seven women and five men were selected this evening for the murder trial of Martha Medina-Hernandez, who is accused of killing a 21-year-old woman last year.
Medina-Hernandez and her husband, Kenneth Hernandez were charged with murder after Applebee’s waitress Christy Lynn Espinosa’s body was found burned in East Travis County.
Pictured: Medina-Hernandez and her husband, Kenneth Hernandez
Authorities said the couple met Espinosa on Sixth Street during Mardi Gras celebration. Espinosa’s body was found at 5 a.m. on Feb. 25, 2009, after a caller summoned firefighters to what was thought to be a grass fire along North Imperial Drive, a two-lane road south of Lake Walter E. Long in eastern Travis County.
But when they arrived, the firefighters instead found Espinosa’s badly burned body facedown several feet west of the road.
Laura Skelding/2009 AMERICAN-STATESMAN — Photos of Christy Lynne Espinosa were displayed during a service at Jubilee Christian Center. The body of the 21-year-old Crockett High alumna was found in eastern Travis County by firefighters who were responding to a blaze.
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August 4, 2009
Travis County's 299th court not so lenient last week
There have been a number of people who have left comments on Statesman.com — including on this Austin Legal blog — decrying both state District Judge Charlie Baird as well as Travis County juries in general as being too soft on crime.
The outcome of two felony trials in the 299th District Court, where Baird is judge, last week may temporarily dispel that notion.
In one, a defendant went to Baird for sentencing after being convicted of burglary. He got a life sentence. In the other, the same jury that found a man guilty of assault/family violence sentenced him to 40 years.
Here’s the rub: Before the trials, prosecutors offered a five-year sentence if the burglary defendant would plead guilty and a two-year sentence in exchange for a guilty plea from the assault defendant. So the sentences were much longer than prosecutors thought was fair.
First off, let’s note that it’s rare for felony judges to hold two jury trials in one week.
Now some details on the cases.
The first involved David Caballero, 42, who was arrested in April after a police officer responding to an emergency call saw Caballero grasping his girlfriend by the neck and pushing her over a guard rail on a bridge near Pleasant Valley Road and East William Cannon, according to a police affidavit. Caballero’s girlfriend said he had also punched her, the affidavit said.
In the other case, Charles Hamilton, 53, was accused of burglary of an apartment in Southeast Austin, a police affidavit said. A police officer responding to another call spotted Hamilton leaving the apartment, the affidavit said.
Baird said in an interview that Hamilton came to Austin after fleeing Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. He had a long rap sheet of convictions in that state, including one for armed robbery for which he has served 20 years.
“This fellow is a career criminal and he’s never gonna stop,” Baird said in explaining the life sentence. “Whenever he gets out of prison, I figured, he was going to just do it again.”
Baird said that in the other case both Caballero and the woman he beat were homeless. He said that police had a hard time finding the victim prior to the trial — which could explain why prosecutors offered such a short sentence for a guilty plea. When they finally did, they brought her into court several days before jury selection to speak with Baird. He told the woman that she could leave on her own promise to return, with the understanding that if she did not report to testify at the trial she would be charged with contempt of court and face a 180-day jail sentence. The other option, Baird said, was for him to take her into custody at the trial to ensure she would be available to testify.
The woman, Baird said, chose to spend several days in jail.
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November 17, 2008
Facebook info give valuable tips on jury pool
In an effort to find jurors more sympathetic to their client’s cause, lawyers now regularly mine the Web, especially social networking sites like Facebook, according to the Statesman’s Eric Dexheimer.
In a story that ran Sunday, Dexheimer notes the practice is used by prosecutors and defense lawyers in criminal cases. One Austin lawyer said he recently discovered the X-rated Webcam of an underage girl who’d charged one of his clients with sexual assault, a fact he hopes to use at trial.
Read the story here and comment below if you think combing the Web is proper preparation for a jury trial.
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