Joseph Garcia met George Rivas back in the summer of 1999, eight months before they started plotting their escape.
They were doing time together on the Connally Unit, counting out their days in the heat of a Texas prison.
Garcia was locked up on a murder charge, a crime he’s long maintained was self-defense. Rivas, on the other hand, was a convicted kidnapper, violent and full of charisma.
They both had decades of time in front of them. But Rivas had better plans.
Around lunchtime on Dec. 13, 2000, they broke out of the maximum security prison south of San Antonio, bringing along five confederates as they made good on an intricate plot culled straight from the pages of a novel.
They took hostages, burst into the prison armory, stole weapons and stormed out in a prison truck, making for the biggest escape in Texas prison history. After pulling off two robberies in the Houston area, they headed to the Dallas suburbs, hoping to get as far as they could from the bloodhounds and helicopters hunting them down.
There, on Christmas Eve, the men held up a sporting goods store and made off with bags of cash and dozens of guns. On the way out, they ran into a cop.
In a chaotic scene, five of the men started firing, some at each other and some at the lawman. When it was over, Officer Aubrey Hawkins lay dead in the Oshman’s parking lot, shot 11 times and dragged 10 feet by an SUV as the panicked prisoners fled.
After a six-figure reward and a spot on “America’s Most Wanted,” the wanted men were finally captured in Colorado more than a month later, living in a trailer park and posing as Christian pilgrims. One killed himself rather than be captured, and the other six were sent to death row.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen,” Garcia told the Houston Chronicle in a recent death row interview. “I wish I could take everything back.”
Three have been executed and now a fourth — Garcia — is scheduled to die Dec. 4. It’s a case that’s galvanized outcry from activists, since it’s not clear that he ever shot anyone. Though he’s consistently admitted to his role in the break-out and robberies, he’s long maintained that he never fired his gun and never intended to kill the officer. Even so, he was sentenced to death under the controversial law of parties, a Texas statute that holds everyone involved in a crime responsible for its outcome.
It’s the thing that put him on death row, but now it’s also a key part of the desperate inmate’s last-ditch efforts at appeal and pleas for clemency.
Whatever the law, it all feels too long for the slain officer’s friends and family.
“We’re coming up on 18 years since the incident,” said Sgt. Karl Bailey, a Seagoville policeman and longtime family friend. “It’s a long time not to get closure — and it wears on you.”
The Law of Parties
The law of parties has long been baked into the Texas criminal code. It’s a statute that’s broader — and used more frequently in death penalty cases — than in many other states, according to Robert Dunham of the Death Penalty Information Center.
The requirements are simple: The state must show only that an accomplice to one felony may have “anticipated” another felony could occur. So, if a three-man robbery crew hits a convenience store and one person kills the clerk, all three of them are guilty of capital murder — even if the other two never fired a shot. And, if there’s a getaway driver waiting outside, he can be responsible as well, even if he never got out of the car.
In some cases, the actual shooter might manage to net a life sentence and be eligible for parole, while non-shooter accomplices face the death chamber.
In some states it’s known as vicarious liability. Nationally, it’s not clear how many people are on death rows across the country under such laws, but the Death Penalty Information Center counts only 10 clear cases of non-shooter accomplices who’ve been executed, including five from Texas.
“There’s this borderline area between common and uncommon and I don’t think it’s either of the two,” Dunham said. “But it’s applied much more frequently in Texas than in similar circumstances in other states.”
Escape plan
Rivas and Garcia became friends because of a prison gang war. It was a feud between the Mexican Mafia and La Raza Unida that sparked a unit-wide lockdown, Garcia told the Chronicle, and the men met up in the dayroom where they bonded over a “poor man’s spread” of prisoner-made food.
The lockdown ended and they went their separate ways, but a few months later, Garcia spotted Rivas standing by his cubicle talking to another man, Larry Harper.
Garcia was already frustrated, only four years in and not sure he could really do all the time stretched out in front of him. He still felt like he wasn’t supposed to be there. And now, he wanted to steal back the life he thought the state had stolen from him.
“Something told me it was time,” he told the Chronicle. “So I walked up and said, ‘Whatever you’re talking about, count me in.’” Then, he turned and walked away.
The next morning, Rivas woke him up, wanting to know if he was serious. He was.
So they hatched a plan, inspired by a book Rivas had read. It was slow going, but one thing they knew from the start: they didn’t want to go over or under the fence. That would mean getting shot at. Instead, they wanted to drive out through the gate, like free men.
First, they had to pick a crew. Harper and a man named Randy Halprin were already on board.
Then, according to Garcia, they learned Donald Newbury was planning an escape of his own, so they invited him along. And they found Michael Rodriguez, whose father was willing to supply a getaway car. Finally, there was Patrick Murphy, a wood shop worker who could help build a false bed for the prison truck they planned to steal.
“For each and every one of us, we all brought something to the table,” Garcia wrote the Chronicle in a letter. “Some more than others.”
It would have to start, they decided, with figuring out a way to take control of the maintenance shop. Rivas already worked there as a clerk. He was a smooth talker, so he schmoozed the guards into getting his friends assigned there, too. It wasn’t a hard sell; supplies went missing all the time, and his friends, he promised, would make sure that didn’t happen.
They did, but putting a stop to the booming thieving business was not a popular move among inmates.
“I was surprised we didn’t get jumped,” Garcia said.
At the same time, they started false rumors among the staff, got intel on officer training, stocked up supplies and memorized security routines.
The night before, Garcia said, they shared a meal and prayed. On Dec. 13, they stayed behind at lunch to wax the floor, then overpowered staff, officers and inmates as they returned to maintenance, according to testimony at the men’s trials.
Two of the gang dressed up as prison workers to sneak into the armory and take control of the guard tower.
Others took the keys to a maintenance truck and loaded it with provisions and guns before they all fled, with some of the escape artists stowed away under the false bed in the pick-up.
They were free, but they didn’t have a long-term plan. Garcia had envisioned a quiet life; maybe they’d fade into the woodwork and get jobs. He knew, on some level, that was never possible.
Surely, the long arm of the law would come grasping at seven high-profile escapees.
The Texas 7
The law of parties has been a perennial source of controversy, sparking editorials, rallies and bills to end it every legislative session.
One of the regular bill-filers is state Rep. Harold Dutton, D-Houston. Since 2003, he said, he’s consistently proposed legislation to end vicarious liability.
“We shouldn’t use the law of parties to convict anybody of capital murder,” he said. “I think we ought to reserve that for the person who actually did the murder.”
Some states have already stepped back from the law of parties. Earlier this year California narrowed its felony murder law, revising the statute to require “major” participation in the crime or at least the intent to kill. So, simply intending to rob a store wouldn’t be enough to net a murder conviction anymore, even if the store clerk gets killed in the process.
But to Toby Shook, the former Dallas County prosecutor who handled all six of the trials, the Texas 7 case is a perfect example of why the statue is necessary.
“This case clearly demonstrates why they need the law of parties,” he said. “This is a group of very violent men who broke out of prison and planned out elaborate robberies. They acted as a group and they murdered a police officer in a group and they acted as a team.”
“I think I killed him”
Once they got beyond the razor wire, the fleeing prisoners soon realized their supplies weren’t enough.
“It’s not like in the books,” Garcia said. “You don’t know people underground selling IDs and birth certificates.”
After pulling off two robberies — one at a Radio Shack and one at a Western Auto — the crew decided to head north. They needed to pick up some cold-weather gear, and maybe some more guns, so they scoped out a sporting goods store in the Dallas suburb of Irving.
But first, they got a copy of the newspaper and cut out the picture of a Scholastic Award winner, then glued his image to a WANTED poster.
Dressed as ADT security guards and toting their cobbled-together poster as a prop, Rivas and Harper went in just before closing time to ask if anyone had seen the supposed smash-and-grab suspect or if he’d been caught on security cameras.
It was all a plot to get into the surveillance room and figure out how much of the store was on camera. Once they did that, Rivas calmly announced it was a robbery.
The escapees scattered in different directions, each tending to their assigned tasks.
Garcia was supposed to go to the clothes and shoes, but there were more customers — more hostages — than they’d expected. So instead, he went to help Newbury tie people up in the breakroom.
They’d only halfway finished when Garcia heard Rivas across the radio. It was time to go.
As Garcia remembers it, he was still inside the store when he heard the first shots.
Halprin recalled it differently, testifying that they were all outside when the patrol car pulled up and blocked them in by the loading dock. Rivas thought they were all already in the getaway car.
In a stand-off with the young officer, five revolvers fired shots. Rivas admitted in court that he shot Hawkins repeatedly. And everyone agrees Rodriguez fired a shot and Murphy was out front as the lookout guy. The rest was chaos and crossfire.
Afterward, they fled and ended up back at an EconoLodge where they’d been staying, trying to parse what had happened and who shot whom.
“I think I killed him,” Rivas said, according to trial records. Everyone fell silent.
The next day they left for Colorado.
Death Row
Since he was sent to death row, Garcia has renewed his relationship with God, written a book and waged almost two decades of appeals.
He’s raised a slew of claims about bad lawyering during trial and earlier in the appeals process, but the courts have denied them all.
Last month, he put in a long-shot plea for clemency to the Board of Pardons and Paroles, laying out his violent childhood with a drug-addicted mother who died of AIDS, his stint in the Coast Guard and evidence that he was not one of the shooters.
At the same time, in a Bexar County petition now in front of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Garcia’s attorneys — Mridula Raman and a team of public defenders — argue that the initial stabbing that landed Garcia in prison was actually self-defense, and his lawyer at the time just failed to show it. If true, that could pose problems for the capital case where prosecutors pointed to the earlier murder as evidence of future dangerousness — a requirement for a death sentence.
“There are significant legal issues before the courts that have not been presented until now because of procedural technicalities and bad lawyering,” Raman said. “It is important for a court to step in now and give Joseph’s case the consideration it deserves.”
And, in a separate appeal of his death sentence in Dallas County, lawyers raised concerns about the use of the Bexar County conviction, ineffective lawyers, an allegedly racist trial judge, and the constitutionality of executing someone the state never proved was a shooter, ever intended to kill anyone, or was even outside at the time of the slaying.
“They were all tried under the law of parties,” Shook said, “so it really doesn’t matter if he was out there or not but I firmly believe he was.”
Garcia maintains otherwise.
“I am on death row because of the actions and intent of others and because I am one of the Texas Seven, case closed,” he wrote in a letter. “Is it right that I should be murdered for something that I did not do?”
If his appeals fail, he’ll be the 12th Texas prisoner executed this year. One more is scheduled for the week after.
Source: houstonchronicle.com, Keri Blakinger, November 23, 2018
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