It took jurors barely more than half an hour to return a guilty verdict Friday in the murder trial of a Honduran accused of bludgeoning to death an acquaintance in the back yard of a West Side home.

Neptali Armando Orellana, 38, now faces up to life in prison for the June 2009 murder of Jesus Ponce, 44. State District Judge Juanita Vasquez-Gardner is to sentence him next month.

Although no witnesses saw an attack, men who were hanging out in the yard that night said Orellana and Ponce still were there as everyone else left, prosecutors reminded jurors during closing arguments.

“The only person that did not tell police the same story — that changed his story numerous times — was this man,” Assistant District Attorney Christine Rankin said, pointing to the defendant.

More importantly, Rankin said, when police caught up to Orellana five hours after the slaying, he had hidden from police, discarded the clothes he was wearing earlier, had tried to contact the Honduran Consulate and had thoroughly cleaned his car, she said.

Detectives were able to find a small amount of blood on the driver’s side seatbelt, which DNA linked to Ponce.

But the blood could have been from an old injury when Orellana was giving Ponce a ride in the past, defense attorney Juan Aguilera responded, suggesting the other men in the yard were likely to blame for the slaying.

The fact that their stories were so similar was suspicious for “three guys who have been consuming mass quantities of alcohol, cocaine, marijuana,” he said.

Prosecutor Steven Speir said the defendant was caught in too many lies.

It’s “absolutely ridiculous,” Speir said, for Orellana to now insinuate that he one time gave Ponce a ride while Ponce was dripping blood.

“When this defendant killed Jesus Ponce, he got blood on himself,” Speir said. “When you bust (a head) open like a melon, you’re going to get blood on yourself.”

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Police launched a manhunt in the downtown area early Wednesday, searching for a double murder suspect from Dallas.

The man is 5 feet 9 inches tall, weighs 170 pounds, is cleanshaven and has red hair and blue eyes.

Officers here said Dallas police believe that he’s responsible for two killings in the Metroplex this week.  They were narrowing their search to the area around the Haven for Hope shelter just west of downtown.

The man was said to be armed with a large knife that Dallas authorities believe might have been used in the killings.

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A San Antonio gang member accused of two separate killings, two non-fatal shootings and the beating and robbery of his pregnant girlfriend — all while still a teen — was sentenced Monday to 45 years in prison.

Melvin D. Price, 20, had pleaded no contest to the murder of Jarred Birden, 19, and to an aggravated robbery charge in exchange for prosecutors seeking concurrent sentences of no more than 45 years in prison.

Defense attorney Andrew Preece asked state District Judge Sid Harle on Monday for a lesser sentence, pointing out that his client took responsibility for the shootings. But his actions over a period of six months speak for themselves, prosecutor Kathy Cunningham responded.

Price admitted shooting Birden multiple times in front of the Saddlebrook Apartments in January 2010 after Birden got into a fight with one of Price’s gang associates. Price wasn’t aiming and didn’t intend to kill him, he told investigators, according to court records.

He assaulted and robbed his girlfriend after suspecting that she had called police about one of the killings, police reported.

The judge also took into consideration the April 2010 fatal shooting of Price’s brother-in-law, Deante Travon Walker, 23. Two other aggravated assault cases involving shootings in which the victims survived, were never filed against Price. As a result of the plea, they will be closed, prosecutors agreed.

Family members on Monday described a rough childhood in which the defendant was raised by his grandmother. He seemed to lose his way when she died, they told the judge.

“I feel very bad and I’m very sorry for what took place that evening,” Price said. “I wasn’t in the right state of mind. I was under the influence.”

Price wept as he was confronted by Birden’s mother, Korone Debrow, during a victim impact statement. She described her son as an aspiring engineer who was working to make something of his life. Despite her pain, Debrow said her son wouldn’t want her to hate his killer.

“You took my world, for nothing,” Debrow told Price. “I’m going to be there for you, since you felt that nobody was there for you. I’m going to show you what it’s like to be loved.”

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A Houston judge has sentenced a 27 year old woman to life in prison for strangling her new born daughter minutes after giving birth to her at home.

Through a translator, Claudia Cortes asked state District Judge Michael McSpadden to forgive her and not gave her a life sentence.

McSpadden said he could find no mitigating circumstances in Cortes’ situation or her background.

The Houston woman was charged with capital murder after an autopsy ruled her daughter had been born alive then strangled June 10, 2007.

In pleading guilty to murder, Cortes admitted she strangled the child with a pair of panties.

Prosecutor Wes Rucker said the capital murder charge was reduced to murder in a plea agreement that put the sentencing decision in McSpaddens hands.

Rucker asked McSpadden to sentence Cortes to life, saying Cortes did not call 911 or ask for help because she knew she was going to kill the child.

Cortes will be eligible for parole in 30 years.

Ken Goode, Cortes’ attorney, asked McSpadden to consider the entire range of punishment, because Cortes wasn’t thinking clearly after giving birth.

“Something snapped and something horrible happened in that bathroom,” Goode said.

The judge castigated Cortes for killing the child in a bloody bathroom.

McSpadden said he had seen thousands of crime scene photos in 30 years on the bench, but looking at the picture of “that sweet innocent child” was hard for him.

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Aside from the murder and kidnapping charges hanging over her head, San Antonio resident Gloria Gamez, 46, might have looked like a bespectacled soccer mom Monday as her trial began.

But Gamez, who also went by the alias “Lorna Mello,” could face up to life in prison if jurors in the 437th state District Court convict her. Through a Spanish interpreter, she pleaded not guilty.

Prosecutors projected graphic images onto the courtroom wall of the charred remains of Herman Diaz III, 38, whose torture and death she is accused of having orchestrated.

Gamez was a midlevel drug dealer who rented several run-down residences out of which she paid addicts to operate drug houses, prosecutors Samantha DiMaio and David Lunan said in opening statements.

When someone stole tens of thousands of dollars worth of drug money and jewelry from her during a burglary in October 2007, she soon came to suspect customers Diaz and Cecilia Coronado, prosecutors said.

Held captive for days, Diaz was kicked, punched and beaten with pipes and chains by other addicts who were prompted by Gamez with free drugs, DiMaio said. His body was later wrapped in plastic, mummylike, and left in a closet until someone dumped it and set it on fire under a bridge along New Laredo Highway, the prosecutor said.

“The person who controlled the other people involved was this defendant,” DiMaio said. “She was the one who had the drugs, the money and the power.”

Coronado, the woman Gamez allegedly suspected, had been close to the defendant since she was hired to dance for Gamez’s son at his birthday party, prosecutors said.

After the burglary, Coronado was tortured and held captive for more than six months before she was able to find a cell phone and call 911, DiMaio told the jury. By the time police found her, she had two black eyes, burns, cuts on her face and a stove mark on her buttocks.

Defense attorneys Suzanne Kramer and Veronica Legarreta declined to immediately give an opening statement.

Among those expected to testify against Gamez during the trial is sister-in-law Emma Mello, a co-defendant who has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in exchange for a sentence of 15 to 20 years.

Taking the stand Monday was house painter Jerry Mello, a cousin of Gamez’s husband who said he worked one of Gamez’s drug houses at night in exchange for heroin or crack cocaine. At Gamez’s direction, he helped beat Diaz, he said, explaining that he saw Diaz tied up over the next several days. He didn’t see what happened after that, he testified.

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After police found a grisly scene and three dead people at his North Side apartment, Christopher Allgood told police his live-in girlfriend did it.

But Courtney Gass, 26, was among the dead, and Allgood was the lone survivor, detectives reminded him.

“She got crazy,” Allgood tearfully mumbled, according to a videotaped statement played at his murder trial Tuesday and Wednesday.  “I had to take the gun away from her, and it went off.”

For six hours, San Antonio police grilled Allgood, trying to unravel how Gass, the couple’s toddler and a visiting friend all ended up dead.

Allgood’s responses provided riveting testimony as prosecutors Chris DiMartino and Marilisa Jansen prepared to rest their case Thursday.

Gass was found in a pool of blood curled under a desk, and police believe she was sitting at the couple’s computer when she was shot in the head.  Allgood, 32, is charged with her murder and could face up to life in prison if convicted.

Allgood was not charged in the deaths of the couple’s 2-year-old daughter, Anika, or Kevin Bones, 35, who was staying with them at the apartment for a weekend in 2009.

They also were shot in the head with a semi-automatic rifle.  Bones, Allgood and Gass were from Texas City.

Gass and Allgood’s relationaship was violent and she had set plans in motion to take her child and leave, with Bones there to help her move to Austin, according to testimony.

In a police interview room, Allgood sat shirtless and sobbed as SAPD homicide detective Lisa Miller pressed him for answers.

He responded with several versions.  Among them was that he and Gass had been drinking the night before, and he awoke to find her with his rifle, and wrestled it away.

“I believe you’re the one who killed them,” Miller said.  “I think you finally had enough of the fussing and the fighting and shot her and then were so distraught you shot your girl and your friend.”

“I did not kill them,” Allgood responded.

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A San Antonio man went on trial Wednesday in the fatal shooting of his girlfriend, but his lawyer argued it was accidental.

Leonard Terrazas entered not guilty pleas to charges of murder and manslaughter in the Sept. 29, 2008, death of Samantha Herrera, 19, a student at San Antonio College.

Prosecutor Catherine Hayes told the jury Terrazas, 23, bought a .380-caliber semiautomatic handgun “from some homeboys” before the shooting, purportedly for protection.

She told the jurors they would hear testimony that Terrazas took the gun to his mother’s home, where he lived with Herrera, loaded it and fired a shot that went through her head and out her neck.  Herrera would have turned 20 the next day.

When police arrived, Terrazas was “very, very upset,” holding Herrera and not wanting to let go, Hayes said.

“The defense will say it was an accident, that he didn’t mean to kill her,” she said.

But Hayes alleged Terrazas fired the gun intentionally or was reckless with it, saying jurors will also hear evidence he was possessive and controlling, giving a hint of a motive.

“If you point a gun at someone’s head and pull the trigger, the result is murder,” Hayes said.

Terrazas’ lawyer, Robert Featherston, told the jury his client does not dispute shooting Herrera.

But “the evidence will show it was not an intentional or reckless act,” Featherston said.  He urged jurors to keep an opened mind because “you will see it was not a voluntary act.”

In a videotaped statement Terrazas gave to police, he said he had been showing Herrera how to use the gun and both even tried “dry firing” it-squeezing the trigger without bullets in it.

But according to the statement, as Terrazas showed Herrera the safety button, the gun went off.  He was adamant he had believed there was no round in the chamber.

“It went, ‘Pop!’ I looked up and I thought I hit the wall,” Terrazas told police.

He faces up to life in prison if convicted of murder.

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A Florida woman was sentenced Wednesday to 50 years in prison for helping her boyfriend hack a San Antonio man to death with a machete.

Jurors decided on the sentence after almost a full day of deliberations in the punishment phase of the trial of Kristi Lynn Tebo, 37.

A day earlier, the jury found her guilty in the murder of Christopher Duncan.

Duncan, 23, was killed Feb. 5, 2008, in a wooded area near a South Side Walmart where Tebo, a homeless drifter from Florida, Thomas Ahrens, had set up camp.

Shorlty before his death, Duncan had met the couple and another homeless man, Robert white, and was drinking beer with them, according to testimony.

White, who cut a plea deal that capped his sentence at 25 years, testified that he got into a fight with Duncan, who then fell on a tent belonging to Tebo and Ahrens while Tebo slept in it.

Angered, Ahrens and Tebo took turns hitting him with a machete they bought earlier for $6 at the Walmart, White told jurors.

Everyone had been drinking, White testified.

Ahrens was convicted of murder at a trial in January and was sentenced to 45 years in prison.

After Duncan’s death, Tebo and Ahrens took Duncan’s debit and credit cards and charged $426 on it for beer, cigarettes, clothes, shoes and other items.  They even celebrated Tebo’s birthday at a Chili’s restaurant with steak dinners and margaritas with extra liquor.

“I don’t understand how they could have a party afterward on his tab,” prosecutor Christian Henricksen told jurors in closing arguments of the punishment phase.

One of Tebo’s lawyers, Louis Martinez, asked jurors to be reasonable in their sentence, and said Tebo would have to serve at least half of her term before she’s eligible for parole.

“Whatever part she did have (in the slaying) was less of a part than Tom Ahrens . . . and less of a part than Robert White,” he said.

In a victim impact statement, Duncan’s mother, Leah Mercer, told Tebo: “My hope is that you will not be able to do this to another family.”

“Hopefully one day you will own up to what you did,” Mercer said. 

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A stone-faced Jessica Tata headed back to jail Friday after a judge dashed her hopes of reducing her $1.1 million bail on charges stemming from the February day care center fire that killed four young children.

Judge Marc Brown of the 180th State District Court issued his decision just seconds after Tata’s attorney, Mike DeGeurin, wrapped up his final plea.  DeGeurin had asked the judge to lower her bail to $50,000.

Tata, 23, is charged with four counts of felony murder, any one of which could send her to prison for life.  Her case gained additional notoriety after she went to Nigeria-her parents homeland-two days after the blaze and one day before criminal charges against her were filed.

DeGeurin said he’ll pursue legal efforts to have the bail lowered, noting that capital murder defendants-people accused of intending harm-often get lower bail.  Tata, he said, had “no intent for anyone to be harmed.”

Kenya Stratford, whose 20-month-old son, Kendyll, died in the fire, said she was pleased with the judge’s decision.

“I think it all boils down to her leaving them alone,” she said of Tata, who was shopping nearby when a pan of grease left on a burning stove burner erupted into flame.  “She should have come back to a house that was empty, not one that had babies.”

The daylong hearing was marked by terse exchanges.  When DeGeurin asked Brown to remove Tata’s handcuffs because “she can’t even wipe her eyes,” the judge said deputies didn’t interfere with his business or he with theirs, and the cuffs would stay on.

Proceedings buzzed to a fever pitch when defense attorneys played Tata’s frenzied, often unintelligible 911 call for assistance.

“What do I do? Oh Lord.  Please someone, these are babies,” Tata shrieked in the recording as babies wailed in the background.  “Somebody help . . . Please help me.  They are all dying.”

A relative of 16-month-old fire victim, Elias Castillo, left the courtroom in tears.

Assistant District Attorney Steve Baldassano called witnesses who testified Tata said she was in the daycare restroom when the fire broke out even though video cameras at a nearby Target recorded her shopping.

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After a night of sending his ex-girlfriend threatening text messages, Ricardo Arcos burst into her apartment, kicked in her locked bedroom door and fatally shot a man she was on her third date with.

On Thursday, days before his capital murder trial was to start, he signed a plea agreement, admitting he killed Jeffrey Sarfin, and has been sentenced to 50 years in prison by state District Judge Raymond Angelini.

Arcos, 30, was arrested in Del Rio last May, a few hours after ex-girlfriend Cassandra Cuellar said she chased him out of the Northwest Side apartment they once shared and called police.

Sarfin, 27, had been shot once in the head.

Arcos and Cuellar had broken up five months earlier, his ex told police.  One of the last straws, she said, was when he was arrested for driving away as she tried to retrieve her daughter from his truck-dragging her and causing her to be hospitalized with several broken bones.

“Richard has a very violent temper and I don’t feel safe anymore,” Cuellar told police in an affidavit after the slaying.  “The sad part is that when he is not drunk he is a great guy.”

She told police Arcos had been sending her jealous text messages all night.

“Unless ur planning on (having sex with) another dude, im going to get u Rt now,” he wrote in one text later photographed by police.  “Gimme an address to get u.  If anything, ill wait at apartment w my gun.”

Twenty minutes later, he added: “Remember whatever happens tonight, its on u. . . .”  By that point, Cuellar said she started ignoring her phone and didn’t realize Arcos was there until she heard banging at the door.  She tried to stop him as he forced his way in, but he was able to reach over her head and fire one shot in the bedroom, she said.

Sarfin was a sentimental, giving person, a hard worker who wanted to become a coach, his mother, Diana Sarfin, said Friday.  The Marshall High School graduate was a few credits shy of a college degree.

“He was just a really great kid,” she said.  “Unfortunately, if it wasn’t him it would have been someone else.”

Arcos wept when he was arrested last year but didn’t appear to show emotion as he was confronted Thursday during a victim impact statement. 

If you have been charged with a crime such as DWI, arson, auto theft, etc., please contact the Law Office of Robert I. Kahn at (210) 225-6600 for a free consultation.

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