15 June 2021 :
Bexar County judge Ron Rangel has resentenced former Texas death-row prisoner Noah Espada to life imprisonment, nearly six years after a Texas appeals court overturned his death sentence because of perjured testimony by a prosecution witness in the penalty phase of Espada’s trial. Espada, now 37, was sentenced to death on Aug. 17, 2005 (see HoC) after he, in separate confessions, admitted he killed Luther “Luke” Scott on March 2, 2004 out of revenge for having been fired 2 weeks beforehand, and, 2 days earlier, on Feb. 29, 2004, Sandra Ramos, 29, when he broke into the wrong apartment looking for Scott. The death sentence was based in large part on the testimony of a former sheriff’s deputy, Christopher Nieto, that Espada would pose a future danger in prisoner if sentenced to life. Nieto lied to the jury about the reasons he had left his job in the sheriff’s office, falsely claimed that Espada had drugs in his cell, and falsely told the jury that Espada had, without provocation, attacked another prisoner. In a post-conviction hearing in 2012, Espada presented evidence that, less than a month before writing up Espada for alleged disciplinary offenses, Nieto had been suspended for leaving his post and threatening Espada, that Nieto had been under investigation for smuggling drugs into the prison, and that Nieto had resigned from the sheriff’s office rather than take a polygraph test about his drug activities. Espada also presented evidence that he had not attacked anyone, but that Nieto had actually arranged for another prisoner to attack Espada.
On July 1, 2015, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Espada’s death sentence based upon Nieto’s perjured testimony. After several years of unsuccessful litigation by Espada to bar prosecutors from arguing that he would pose a risk of future dangerousness, the parties agreed to a deal in which Espada could become eligible for parole at age 71 in 2055.
