JOHN T. FLOYD LAW FIRM
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Comments on Current Events In Criminal Law
June 09, 2008
THE JUAN LEONARDO QUINTERO CASE
Houston Criminal Defense Attorney John Floyd Discusses a Juries Decision to Sentence Convicted Cop Killer to Life in Prison
Everyone, including Juan Leonardo Quintero, was unhappy about the May 20, 2008 jury verdict that spared the convicted cop killer an appointment with a state executioner and insured that he would spend the rest of his natural life in a maximum security state prison.
Why did the jury return the verdict anyway? It was truly a slam dunk capital case. The evidence of guilt seemed overwhelming. Houston police officer Rodney Johnson arrested the 34-year-old illegal immigrant/landscaper on September 21, 2006 following a routine traffic stop for speeding. Johnson, by all accounts, was a wonderful person and a “great” cop. It is not known how many “mistakes” he made during his distinguished law enforcement career. It could not have been many because street cops do not enjoy the luxury of making a lot of “mistakes.”
But Johnson made a serious, fatal mistake that day when he searched Quintero and missed a 9mm semiautomatic pistol concealed in the suspect’s waistband. Johnson then handcuffed Quintero’s hands behind the suspect’s back and placed him in backseat of the officer’s patrol vehicle. Somehow, the illegal immigrant, who was potentially facing a criminal charge for illegal reentry and deportation back to Mexico, managed to get his cuffed hands from behind his back, remove the 9mm from his waistband, and shoot seven bullets into back of Johnson’s head.
How did Johnson miss the gun? That question has gnawed a hole in the lives of Johnson’s family and friends. The question can only be answered through speculation. It was a hot day. Perhaps the heat created an unconscious desire to expedite the search in order to get back in the air-conditioned patrol vehicle to write the traffic stop report. Or it could be that Quintero had been drinking beer while driving a company truck and the suspect could have swayed at the exact moment Johnson’s “pat-down” moved to the area where the 9mm was concealed. Johnson may have perceived the swaying movement as a natural consequence of intoxication.
Street cops normally have pretty good survival instincts. They know a “bad guy” when they make initial contact. Johnson’s survival instincts failed him that last day of summer in 2006. Quintero was a “bad guy.” He was in this country illegally. He had previously been deported for sexual indecency with a 12-year-old girl. He was carrying a 9mm and driving a company truck while drinking beer. A person carries a 9mm for its “killing power.” It’s not a weapon for the faint of heart. Being an illegal immigrant, it can reasonably be assumed that Quintero was not carrying his 9mm for self-defense. He had been deported once. He was determined not to let it happen again without a fight. The 9mm was a “kill weapon.” The fact that this individual would drive a vehicle while drinking, much less a company truck, demonstrates he was not a responsible thinking person. He was, in fact, an armed and dangerous fugitive, prepared to kill to keep from being deported. Officer Johnson did not instinctively perceive that fact. That error in judgment cost the good cop his life – perhaps he was too good and decent of a person to be a good street cop. Street cops to be really good, more often than not, have to be really bad. That is the nature of the beast.
Still, the question lingers: why did the jury that convicted Quintero of capital murder decide to hand down a 10-2 verdict to spare his life? The evidence of premeditated murder had been devastatingly convincing. Quintero struggled to get his handcuffed hands from behind his back and managed to pump seven bullets into the back of Officer Johnson’s head. One bullet, two at the most, would have killed the officer. Quintero emptied the weapon into Johnson’s already lifeless body. He didn’t “shoot to kill” to escape – he couldn’t get out of the locked patrol vehicle. He was sitting there when backup officers arrived – the proverbial “smoking gun” in hand. He was arrested and readily confessed to the murder.
Jury verdicts are indeed complex at times. They are sometimes more a byproduct of social and political issues than the evidence presented at trial. For example, the race of either the victim or the defendant can influence a jury’s verdict in capital cases – of the 1101 persons executed in this country since 1976, 223 of them were black defendants who killed white victims while only 15 white defendants were executed for killing black victims. The social and economic status of the defendant can also play a significant role in murder cases as evidenced by the “not guilty” verdict in the high-profile O.J. Simpson double murder case and the ultimate dismissal of the murder charge against Klaus von Bulow.
The jury verdict in the Quintero case was probably the product of a number of entwined legal and social issues. First, Quintero’s defense attorneys, Danalynn Recer and David Lane, were prepared to defend the case. The defense team put Quintero’s mental health issues before the jury at the outset of the trial, repeatedly hammering home the point that life circumstances had transformed the defendant into a troubled individual who was not the monstrous cold-blooded murderer prosecutors tried to portray him.
“We had a smart and thoughtful jury,” Recer was quoted in the Houston Chronicle following the verdict. “The people of Harris County do not respond in the automatic, knee-jerk way that we are led to believe. I’m proud of this jury. They saw his humanity.”
Recer had every reason to be proud. She, and David Lane, had performed brilliantly in the courtroom against what the prosecutors probably thought was a slam dunk because of the “overwhelming” evidence of guilt against Quintero.
Against nearly impossible odds, Recer and Lane managed to convince the jury that Quintero was a human being whose life had value while prosecutors failed in their effort to show the jury that the defendant was a remorseless cop-killer who deserved nothing less than death by lethal injection.
“I believe [Quintero] has value,” juror Letty Burkholder was quoted by the Houston Chronicle after the verdict. “He’s loved by many of his family and friends, and that was number one. I felt like has potential.”
Officer Johnson’s family was naturally not as understanding about the jury’s verdict.
“My husband’s life meant nothing – that’s what I felt,” said Joslyn Johnson, Officer Johnson’s widow and also a law enforcement officer. “If any case ever warranted the death penalty, this [case] certainly did. The city lost a hero. I lost my husband.”
While moved by the sentiment expressed by the Johnson family, juror Tiffany Moore remained committed to the jury’s verdict.
“I still feel we came to the right decision,” the 38-year-old marketing director was quoted by the Chronicle. “We could never bring Rodney back. I feel very sad for the family, losing a loved one.”
One of the two jurors who refused to give up her vote for the death penalty and join the ranks of the life sentence jurors was not as understanding about the jury’s verdict. Cindy Bradford, a local secretary, told the Chronicle that she believed the ten jurors who opted for a life sentence did so because “they were just tired of deliberating and wanted to get it over with and go home.”
“I’m outraged as anyone else about this,” the 44-year-old Bradford added. “We’re telling everyone that you can enter this country illegally, plead guilty to indecency with a child, get deported, come back anyway, execute a police officer and that’s OK. Now we get to take care of him for the rest of his life, and I personally have a problem with that … the death penalty exists for a reason. I don’t feel it should be handed out like aspirin, but I believe there are cases in which it is warranted. This case absolutely was one of them.”
Bradford’s harsh sentiments reflected the overall general community outrage triggered by the jury’s verdict. This outrage was expressed in a number of letters to the editor published in the Chronicle on May 22, 2008.
“A Houston jury embraces nihilism and refuses to render society’s moral judgment,” wrote Jeff Ingram of Spring, Texas. “The [Quintero] jury failed in its duty. The jury said Officer Rodney Johnson’s life had no moral value worth respecting. If I were a Houston policeman I would resign. I would know that the community does not respect my life or my contribution.”
Like Ingram, Bradford was also upset because some jurors seem to indicate that Officer Johnson’s death was just a risk associated with the law enforcement profession he chose.
“It’s like Johnson somehow deserved to get what he got,” the dissatisfied juror said. “I beg to differ. They [police] don’t sign up to be assassinated.”
One of the post-verdict letters to the Chronicle reflected the kind of sentiment that upset persons such as Bradford and Ingram.
“No one would argue at the tremendous loss caused by the murder of Officer Rodney Johnson,” wrote Carol Cardona, a Houston resident.
“His family, friends and fellow officers have suffered, and continue to do so. The man convicted deserves the harshest punishment allowable.
“However, the lawsuit filed by Johnson’s widow blaming, among other things, his presence alone on patrol as the reason he was vulnerable overlooks the obvious. The sad truth is, Johnson did not do his job.
“That a suspect, handcuffed in a police car, had access to a gun, his own, and was able to discharge it while still handcuffed can only lead to the conclusion that a body search, if performed, was substandard.
“This is no way absolves Quintero of guilt. He has been found guilty and should pay for the crime. But to say this act is due to the fault of others does not fit the facts.”
The Cardona letter - and perhaps the Quintero verdict itself - reflect an underlying disrespect for Houston law enforcement. There are some valid underpinnings for this social disrespect. Houston law enforcement has an unfortunate history of being involved in questionable shooting deaths of known criminal suspects, mentally disturbed individuals, and innocent citizens who posed no threat to either to the police or the community. The latest questionable police shooting death involved Roland Carnaby, a self proclaimed CIA operative shot in the back by two Houston police officers following a high-speed police chase that should never had occurred. The police had Carnaby’s identification and address. They knew he did not have a criminal record. There was no need to engage him in a high speed chase when he fled from a routine traffic stop. The high-speed pursuit, in fact, violated departmental policy. But policy did not matter that day. The only thing that mattered was to apprehend a traffic suspect who challenged police authority by fleeing. And they did apprehend him, only to shoot him twice in the back because they mistook a cell phone for a pistol. They then handcuffed him and let him “bleed out” on the pavement like human garbage without giving him any assistance.
Beyond the issue of questionable shooting deaths, there was the recent well-publicized $1.4 million damage award against the city to the “Ibarra brothers” because law enforcement misconduct against the brothers in 2004. And as if that was not enough, recent media reports revealed that the same local law enforcement agency conducted illegal surveillance of the Ibarra brothers while their civil rights lawsuit was still being litigation. This latest potential civil rights violation against the brothers is being investigated by the Harris County District Attorney’s office.
These “scandals” are not aberrations. Over the past five years there has been one sensational media “headline” after another concerning the criminal conduct, ineptitude, and mismanagement of the Houston police department’s “crime lab” – all of which resulted in innocent people being convicted and sent off to the prison. And then there have been “reports” about the department’s “evidence room” – officers stealing and selling seized narcotics and criminals under community supervision being allowed access so they could steal weapons and put them back on the streets. Recent op-ed pieces on the Sunday Chronicle editorial pages screamed about Houston’s above national average crime rates and the police department’s lack of an effective strategy to deal with the problem.
The recent email scandals and forced resignation of former Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal only added to social disrespect for law enforcement in this community. The Rosenthal political damage was so pervasive that former Assistant District Attorney Kelly Seigler failed last March in her bid to become the Republican nominee for District Attorney despite having the overwhelming endorsement of local law enforcement and crime victim advocates.
The average law enforcement officer in Harris County is honest, decent, hard-working, and, above all else, courageous. Their only objective, indeed, is to serve and protect the best of the community from the worst of the community. Theirs is far too often a thankless, unrewarding, and dangerous undertaking as evidenced by the senseless death of Rodney Johnson who was reportedly sent to his death by a man hurling racial slurs at him.
But the one lasting, and quite bitter, lesson learned here is: perception is 90 percent reality. The worst in the local law enforcement community – those too quick to kill or beat or steal – have given the “crime-fighting” profession a bad name. This perception has become a reality in many corners of Harris County.
Whether the Quintero jury truly believed that the life of the convicted killer had “value” sufficient to spare him the death penalty or whether some of its members were simply too tired and wanted to get home without having to deal with the vexing issue of the death penalty will never be known. It’s a “moot issue” as they say in the legal profession.
But what is not moot is the issue of punishment. While the Johnson family, Johnson’s fellow officers, and a large segment of the community would have preferred the death penalty, it can be assured that the interests of punishment will be served. Quintero will never be released from prison. Using the average life expectancy of 76 years for an American male as a guide (and, that is not a safe guide to use in determining life expectancy in prison), Quintero will serve 42 years in one or another of Texas’ maximum security prisons before he dies. That will be no Sunday walk in the park. Quintero knows that. A smile collapsed from his face when asked by a reporter the day after the verdict about the life sentence. “It’s not something to be happy about,” he responded somberly to the Chronicle.
Quintero will probably spend years in a maximum security lockdown status because of “security concerns” about his personal safety. He made that a virtual certainty when, according to the Chronicle, he expressed concern about “his own safety.” Prison officials will use that concern as a basis for declaring him a “security risk” in need of protection. Living and surviving in prison is a “rough row to hoe” but existing in a one-man cell in “extended lockdown” is far worse. It’s a world where self-mutilation, suicide, mental disorders, psychotic reactions, chemical spray, forced cell extractions, four-prong mechanical restraints, and restraint chairs are permanent fixtures of the environment. It is the worst place to be in a prison – a living hell. There will be punishment enough to satisfy the most vengeful heart. “Well, at least he’s alive,” some will say. No, not really. He will just exist. Life imprisonment without the benefit of parole is not a human life. It is a living death.
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