A convicted killer from Fort Worth has been pulled off death row for good.
Juan Segundo, 59, had been scheduled for execution in 2018 for the murder of 11-year-old Vanessa Villa. The girl was strangled in 1986. But a Supreme Court ruling on intellectual disabilities changed the dynamics. Now the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, using the new law, reformed Segundo's sentence to life without parole.
In 1986, Vanessa Villa was raped and strangled in her Fort Worth home. Police say Segundo took a fan out of a bedroom window to get access to the girl's bedroom.
The case went unsolved for nearly 10 years until a cold case unit used DNA to tie Segundo to the crime.
During the trial, Segundo's defense raised the issue of his intellectual capacity. The court rejected the argument. Segundo was convicted and sentenced to death.
The sentence was upheld, as appellate courts swatted away appeals, including appeals over Segundo's mental state, and he remained on death row.
Things changed when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in February 2019 that another Texas death row inmate, Bobby Moore, could not be executed because of his mental capacity.
Citing the Supreme Court's decision in Moore v. Texas as a previously unavailable legal basis, Segundo argued that his prior claim of intellectual disability had been analyzed under an unconstitutional standard.
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The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals asked a Tarrant County judge to conduct a hearing to determine whether Segundo fit the mental disqualification set out in the Moore case.
"On July 7, 2021, the habeas court signed findings of fact and conclusions of law, in which the habeas court concluded that Applicant had 'met his burden to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that he satisfied the medical criteria for a diagnosis of intellectual disability,'" the CCA ruled on Wednesday. "Having reviewed the record in this case, we agree with the habeas court that Applicant has met his burden to establish by a preponderance of the evidence that he is a person with intellectual disability. We adopt the habeas court's findings of fact and conclusions of law."
The Court changed the sentence from death to life without parole.
For relatives it was a gut-punch that denies justice.
"I don't think it's fair for my sister," said Enrique Baldaras, brother of Villas. "It really makes me sick and I don't think whoever is doing the law is doing what they could do. They should kill him."
But legal scholars say the Court of Criminal Appeals evidently had its hands tied by the Supreme Court's ruling in Moore.
"This is the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, basically, doing what they have been told to do by the Supreme Court," said Brian Owsley, a law professor at the University of North Texas, Dallas, school of law.
Two justices dissented. Presiding Judge Sharon Keller said in an opinion "While a jury did not deliberate on the issue of intellectual disability, the trial court did make a determination—that the evidence did not even raise the issue. Having failed to challenge that determination, Applicant ought now to be required to meet a freestanding innocence-type standard—to show by clear and convincing evidence that no reasonable juror could reject his intellectual disability claim. I do not think Applicant has made that showing."
An attorney representing Segundo did not return calls.
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