After more than two decades on Texas death row, a Mexican national convicted of killing three teens in El Paso died in bed early Sunday of cardiac arrest, a prison spokesman confirmed.
Officials found 49-year-old Ignacio “Nacho” Gomez in his cell on the Polunsky Unit around 5:37 a.m. and took him to a Livingston hospital, where he was pronounced dead just over an hour later.
The 49-year-old had long suffered from mental illness, and spent much of his time behind bars in the prison psychiatric ward. According to his lawyer, he wasn’t competent to be executed.
“His passing ends a long process of difficult litigation,” said El Paso-based attorney Robin Norris, “and, I hope, will serve as closure for everyone concerned.”
In November 1996, Gomez wrapped a loaded revolver in a white T-shirt and started cruising through his family’s neighborhood outside of El Paso, hoping to hunt down the person who’d vandalized his mother’s house and badly scared her. As he tooled around the spread-out homes and dirt roads, Gomez ran into his brothers and brother-in-law and agreed to drive them to the store, according to court records.
On the way, they passed by three teens walking along the side of the road. When one of his brothers identified them as the trio who’d broken their mother’s windows, Gomez pulled over and a brawl broke out. The fighting quickly escalated into wrestling and one-on-one punching matches - but after a minute, a shot rang out.
“S***, it hit him,” someone said, according to court records.
The shooter fired again and again, then told the shot teens in obscenity-laced Spanish that no one should mess with his mother.
Afterward, Gomez and his brothers loaded the bodies into the truck and drove out to the desert to bury them in a shallow grave. When police later arrested him, Gomez confessed to the slaying, saying he was “upset” about what had happened with his mother.
He was sent to death row in 1998, but his case gained notoriety years later when he became one of a handful of Mexican nationals to challenge his conviction based on claims the U.S. flouted international treaties in handling the case.
Defense attorneys representing Gomez said he was never told of his right to inform the Mexican consulate of his arrest and request legal assistance from his country, a move that violated the Vienna Conventions on Consular Relations.
Ultimately, courts decided that the Vienna Convention is only enforceable between countries, and not by American courts in individual criminal cases.
When he died Sunday, he did not have an execution date scheduled.
The Mexican consulate did not offer comment on his death.
Source: Houton Chronicle, Kari Blakinger, July 23, 2019
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