Guilty on all counts in judge shooting
Verdict could send Houston man to prison for rest of his life.
A federal jury returned guilty verdicts on all 17 counts against the Houston man accused of shooting Travis County state District Judge Julie Kocurek to preserve a white-collar criminal enterprise that swept up victims in Southeast Texas, Louisiana and Austin.
The verdict that could send 30-year-old Chimene Onyeri to prison for the rest of his life came down Thursday after four hours of jury deliberations — a swift conclusion to a 19-day trial that included more than 800 government exhibits.
Kocurek, who has presided over felony cases in Travis County since 1999, declined to comment, but she passed along a message through District Attorney Margaret Moore to “tell this community how much she appreciates the jury’s verdict.” Kocurek — who lost a finger from an infection caused by injuries from the shooting and has needed more than 20 surgeries — testified that at her lowest point she considered walking away from her career as a jurist. But she returned to work in late February 2016, four months after the shooting.
“I felt this was bigger than me,” Kocurek testified during the trial. “It was an attack on our justice system. I felt I had to go back to work to show you can’t do this to our justice system.”
Key to the government’s case was testimony from multiple Onyeri associates, who described
his behavior before, during and after the attack that left Kocurek badly injured in front of her 15-year-old son on the driveway of the family’s West Austin home. The prosecution’s consistent message was that Onyeri had planned to kill the judge before she could send him to prison for a probation violation.
Onyeri, the only witness whom the defense called to testify, admitted to firing four shots but said he intended only to damage Kocurek’s vehicle and to scare her son, and did not realize the judge was sitting in the passenger seat.
Outside of the courthouse, lead prosecutor Gregg Sofer declined to say whether he will request a life sentence when U.S. Judge Lee Yeakel hands down Onyeri’s punishment Aug. 17. He did reveal that investigations are pending into Onyeri associates, including one or more people who are accused of assisting in the attack by tracking down the judge’s home address and phone number. Another associate is alleged to have stolen Social Security numbers from jail inmates through his job at a juvenile corrections facility and passing them along to others in the enterprise who filed fraudulent tax returns.
That same associate, Barry Tebebi, is also accused of renting the vehicle that Rollingwood police stopped in 2012 when Onyeri and another man were found in possession of stolen credit cards. Onyeri had gotten three years of probation in Kocurek’s court in that case.
“The bottom line is our investigation isn’t over; we’re going to keep digging,” Sofer said. “We know who they are, and they need to be careful.”
Other convictions handed down by the jury were for mail fraud, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and tampering with witnesses. Onyeri had contacted six of the witnesses in the case from a jail phone that was recorded, or through letters, advising them to not speak with law enforcement.
More recordings of jail phone calls and additional evidence tied Onyeri to other fraud schemes involving debit card skimming, credit cards and stolen tax refund checks. His associates — 24 by the government’s count — included tax preparers, mail carriers, drivers, lookouts and multiple women who would put on a burqa worn by Muslim women to hide their identities as they entered department stores to buy electronics with stolen debit card information.
About 10 associates testified against Onyeri in exchange for the promise of light sentence recommendations from prosecutors.
A racketeering charge, the most serious charge Onyeri faced, carried a special sentencing enhancement for attempted capital murder for the judge’s shooting. After jurors concluded Onyeri had engaged in a racketeering enterprise, they then determined the judge’s shooting was directly related to protecting that enterprise.
Their verdict showed they disagreed with Onyeri’s lawyers who said the shooting was over his displeasure with Kocurek, and unrelated to the fraud charges he faced.
Defense lawyer Victor Arana declined to comment.
The trial provided a closer look into Onyeri, a popular member of a poor community in Southwest Houston, who spent one semester at Lamar University before dropping out and pursuing a career as a rapper. He never held a meaningful job. He detested marijuana, watched ESPN religiously and gambled on just about anything, especially blackjack, he said.
During three days of testimony, Onyeri referred to Sofer as “Sofe,” cried when discussing an old aggravated robbery case in which he was acquitted by a jury, and attacked the credibility of most of the witnesses who testified against him.
He even called Kocurek “superhuman” for getting up in front of the crowded courtroom and testifying.