Editorial: Guilty

The retrial of John Allen Rubio has raised interest throughout the Rio Grande Valley that goes beyond a voyeur’s attraction to the horrific strangulation and decapitation of one’s own children. The 2003 crime brought so many issues to the public’s consciousness that many have found it compelling.

The first issue is the three victims’ ages — 2 months, 1 year, and 3 years — which endeared them to many people who never knew them, but who knew children so young are innocent and completely dependent on their parents. Some might have thought of their own infants, and the pleasure of holding children who are just beginning their lives.

Other circumstances revealed in the case also attract attention, such as information that the Rubio and the children’s mother, Angela Camacho, stopped to have sex during their crimes.

We saw the horrid conditions under which the destitute family lived.

We also learned that they talked of hearing voices, of drug use and prostitution. Defense attorneys have used that to try to convince jurors that the couple didn’t have the mental capacity to understand their actions.

The defense hasn’t worked. Camacho was sentenced in 2005 to life in prison, and on Monday a second jury found Rubio guilty of capital murder.

He was convicted in 2003 and sentenced to death, but an appeals court in 2007 ordered a new trial because defense attorneys weren’t able to cross-examine Camacho, whose taped testimony was used against Rubio.

The jurors are now hearing evidence to determine whether or not they will recommend execution, as the previous panel had.

Insanity pleadings are complicated in Texas.

Defense attorneys tried unsuccessfully to convince the court that Rubio was insane and couldn’t understand the proceedings or assist in his own defense.

After he was found competent to stand trial, his defenders sought to show that sniffing paint and other drug use had made him insane at the time of the crimes.

Texas’ Code of Criminal Procedure however, doesn’t allow temporary insanity or intoxication by drugs that were taken voluntarily to mitigate a person’s behavior.

It can, however, be used when considering a sentence.

Several other states are just as rigid against insanity pleas; their numbers grew after John Hinckley Jr. successfully used it in his federal trial for shooting President Reagan. Federal codes remain more lenient toward insanity pleas.

Many people see this as an injustice, saying that even if voluntary drug use created the conditions under which a person committed a crime, the inability to know right from wrong at the time of the crime still should be considered. Our state lawmakers have debated bills on the issue, but so far have chosen not to allow greater use of the temporary insanity defense.

It could come up again when the Legislature meets again in January.

Should people have greater freedom to claim in Texas courts that they didn’t know what they were doing at the time of a crime, even though they appear sane at the time of their trial? Would it have mattered in Rubio’s case? In the seven years since these children’s slayings, people have been split on the issue.

Regardless of current law, or any changes that might be made, we can expect that debate to continue long after this trial is over.