08 February 2010 :

Gabriel Gonzales has been re-sentenced to life. Gonzales, 35, hispanic, returned to the same Bexar County courtroom where a jury condemned him to die in 1977 for killing a pawn shop owner during a botched robbery. But this time — with his previous sentence now voided by an appellate court — he was instead ordered to serve life in prison for the same crime. Gonzales will have to serve 27 more years before he can be eligible for parole. Gonzales was a 20-year-old member of the Crips gang who was known as "Capone" when he and 4 others were alleged to have stormed into Louella Hilton's store on June 20, 1994. During his 1997 capital murder trial, he was accused of serving as the trigger man — shooting Hilton 3 times. At his punishment hearing jurors didn't hear were allegations that as a child he had been sexually abused by his father. Without that potentially mitigating evidence, they didn't have a full enough picture to decide whether to take his life, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled in 2006. While the conviction remained, a new sentencing hearing was ordered. 144th District Court Judge Catherine Torres-Stahl approved the new sentence.