Controversy surrounds decision to grant killer probation

The Monitor 

EDINBURG - Convicted killer Antonio Saldaña may be out of jail but his battle to win public support has only just begun.

On Monday, an Hidalgo County jury sentenced the 46-year-old elementary school custodian to 10 years probation for killing his neighbor and former friend, Pedro Garcia.

A day later, the decision divided trial watchers, many of whom were surprised to learn that such a punishment was even an option in murder trials.

But legal experts warned against criticizing or jumping to conclusions Tuesday without knowing all the facts. Nona C. Dodson, a North Texas-based jury consultant didn't work on Saldaña's case but has helped lawyers select panels in dozens of criminal trials across the state.

"Looking at it from the outside, you question how could this happen," Dodson said. "But once you're in the courtroom, human lives are involved, and it's hard to know what to think without living it, thinking it and breathing it like (the jury) did."

SUDDEN PASSION

Saldaña's sentence, while unusual, is not unprecedented, according to state and national statistics.

Texas is one of the few states that allows a jury to hand down binding sentences, and until last year was one of eight to allow probation as an option in murder trials.

State law allows juries to sentence convicted murderers to probation and reduce the crime to a second-degree felony during the penalty phase of the trial if they believe the killing occurred under the influence of sudden passion and was not premeditated.

From 2000 to 2006, more than 120 defendants convicted of murder across the state avoided being sentenced to prison time.

Nationwide, 7 percent received probation just in 2004, the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics reported.

But try explaining that to 16-year-old Cecilia Garcia, who discovered her father bleeding to death last year and watched Saldaña walk away from the scene, shotgun in hand.

She challenged the probation sentence Monday, saying the jury's decision made it seem like it was OK to kill under the right circumstances.

"I think the victim's family said it all," Hidalgo County District Attorney Rene Guerra said Tuesday. "I have nothing good to say about that case."

Throughout Saldaña's four-day trial, prosecutors alleged he shot Pedro Garcia because he incorrectly suspected the man was having an affair with his wife.

While Saldaña never disputed he killed his neighbor, his attorney - Fernando G. Mancias - argued that he did so after enduring months of taunting and ridicule from the man.

The final straw came Jan. 6, 2007, when Saldaña discovered several phone calls from a man he suspected to be Garcia on his wife's cell phone. He went next door to confront his neighbor. Minutes later Garcia was dead.

Jurors convicted Saldaña of murder last week but decided in the punishment phase of his trial that Garcia's alleged insults finally caused Saldaña to snap.

Attempts to contact several members of the panel Tuesday were unsuccessful, but Mancias said they were unanimously convinced that the murder was a completely uncharacteristic action by his client.

"Their general feeling was that Mr. Saldaña snapped - that he was acting with a sudden passion," he said.

‘SHOCKS THE CONSCIENCE'

Reaching that decision was likely the result of good defense and even better timing, according to legal experts.

Under a state law signed into effect in September last year, legislators removed probation as a sentencing option for convicted murderers. Because Saldaña's crime was committed eight months earlier, his case remained exempt from the prohibition.

"It shocks the conscience of the general public," said state Rep. Aaron Peña, D-Edinburg, who serves as chairman of the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee and co-authored the bill.

Although unfamiliar with the specific circumstances of Saldaña's case, Peña said he was floored when he learned last year that convicted killers could walk away without serving any jail time.

Jury consultant Dodson knows how difficult it can be for those outside the courtroom to understand. The fight for the hearts and minds of jurors begins and ends during jury selection and opening arguments of the trial, she said.

"Before this case ever got started, the jurors were clearly screened for their ability to consider probation for murder," she said. "And not just consider it but give it fair consideration."

Mancias plugged away at potential jurors during the selection process, looking for those who could keep an open mind. He even got Saldaña's prosecutor Catarina Alvarado to admit she might be driven to kill if someone attacked her son.

Dodson believes it was no coincidence Saldaña's jury was made up of mostly middle-aged men.

"If you're a person who has just taken it and taken it and taken it from family and bosses, you can relate to the defendant's action," she said. "Men tend to identify with that idea of losing it for just a moment."

Such attempts to build empathy among jury members are key in defending a murder suspect, Brownsville attorney Ernesto Gamez said.

Last year, his client Traci Rhode was sentenced to 10 years probation after a Cameron County jury convicted her of killing her husband.

But between the verdict and the sentencing, he said, he convinced the mostly female panel it had made a mistake. The secret? Relying on the jurors' ability to put themselves in Rhode's shoes.

"I intentionally picked women with children (for the jury)," he said. "I wanted them to know what it would be like to take a mother away from her children and put her in prison.

"And by the end of the trial, I had them all crying. I could see in their eyes that they thought they had messed up."

MOVING FORWARD

Saldaña was released early Tuesday morning after spending 15 months in the Hidalgo County Jail.

He is set to be formally sentenced May 23, at a hearing in which Auxiliary Court Judge Fidencio Guerra will set the terms of his supervised release.

Judge Guerra could order Saldaña incarcerated for up to six months as a condition of his probation. But Mancias said such an order was unlikely because the jury had specifically recommended that his client serve no more jail time.

Garcia's family, meanwhile is left to try to come to terms with a legal system it believes let their love one's killer walk away.

"Sometimes with the jury, they have so much feeling for the person sitting in front of them in court that they forget the person that's gone," Rep. Peña said. "There has to be a system of laws applied evenly across the states."

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