Texas DA gives up capital charges for plea from El Paso Walmart mass murderer

As reported in this local article, “El Paso District Attorney James Montoya campaigned for the job saying he would pursue the death penalty against the 26-year-old gunman who killed 23 people in a local Walmart in 2019 and said he wanted ‘to shoot as many Mexicans as possible.’  But after the case had passed through the hands of four different prosecutors and dragged out nearly six years, on Tuesday Montoya said his office had consulted with victims’ families as well as surviving victims and decided to offer Patrick Crusius a plea bargain that didn’t include the death penalty.”  Here is more:

“This was not a decision that was reached lightly or hastily,” Montoya said at a news conference. He explained that pursuing the death penalty would prolong the case for several more years. 

The plea deal would allow a judge to sentence the gunman to life in prison without the possibility of parole.  Montoya said he still believes the gunman — who was convicted and sent to prison by federal prosecutors as the state case dragged on — deserves the death penalty, but he didn’t want to delay closure for the families.  “I believe in the death penalty. I believe that this defendant deserves the death for what he did,” he said.

Montoya said a plea and sentencing hearing is scheduled for April 21.  Montoya said most of the families told him they supported the decision because some are tired of all the court proceedings. But some families wanted Montoya to keep pushing for a death sentence, even if it took several more years.

On Aug. 2, 2019, Crusius drove more than 600 miles from his home in Allen, north of Dallas, to El Paso and began shooting people in the parking lot of a Walmart that was busy with back-to-school shoppers. Then he entered the store and continued his rampage.  The victims were mostly Mexican-Americans and Mexican citizens from El Paso and Ciudad Juárez. One of the victims was a 66-year-old German man who moved to Mexico in the 1980s, married a woman from Juárez and settled there.  The victims ranged in age from 15 to 90….

In July 2023, he was sentenced in federal court to 90 consecutive life sentences after federal prosecutors opted not to pursue a death sentence.  At the time, El Paso District Attorney Bill Hicks, Montoya’s predecessor, said he would seek the death penalty on the state charges.

This press piece and others I have read made leave somehwat unclear whether the victims’ families may have actively pushed for this deal or whether the DA decided it was a good idea upon hearing families stating that they were “tired of all the court proceedings.”  Whatever the particulars, it is fascinating that Texas has executed dozens of persons for a single murder in recent years, but this defendant who killed 23 people and injured 22 others will no longer even face a possible death sentence.  Such is the reality of prosecutor (sentencing) discretion.