Prosecutors will seek death penalty in MS-13 member case
His nickname was “Terror,” and his alleged crime was brutal.
But now the MS-13 gang member could be headed for death row after District Attorney Kim Ogg formally gave notice her office has decided to seek a death sentence against a Salvadoran immigrant accused in the retaliatory group killing of a teenage Houston police informant.
In an expansive case with seven men charged, Douglas Alexander Herrera-Hernandez, 21, is the second person facing the possibility of the state’s harshest punishment for the 2016 murder in a Fort Bend park.
“We will not tolerate this behavior,” said prosecutor Lisa Collins, who is handling all seven of the capital murder cases connected to the teen’s death. “The criminal element has to take prosecution seriously, and I think that’s what we do by being consistent and making sure that each case is held to the highest standards.”
The decision comes amid a changing landscape for capital punishment in the place historically most fond of it. Though this month Harris County sent its first man to death row in four years, Ogg has overseen taking four killers off death row and decided to stop seeking the ultimate punishment in a handful of cases.
“Part of it is an indication that her administration is taking a more progressive view of criminal justice issues,” said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, “but part of it is a significant national decline and whatever administration was in would be pursuing the death penalty less frequently and settling more cases.”
The accused killer’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.
On the night of June 13, 2016, Herrera-Hernandez and four of his associates allegedly lured Estuar Quiñonez, 16, to Buffalo Run Park in Missouri City. Some of the men hid in the bushes, lying in wait as the others led the teen down a gravel trail.
Estuar and one of his eventual killers were sitting on a bench trying to smoke pot out of a plastic bottle around 11 p.m. when another member of the crew fired the first shot, according to court records.
Methodical killing
One by one, they all shot the teen, continuing to fire until he stopped moving, records show.
The next morning, a jogger was the first to spot the boy’s body, lying in the trail. Initially, she thought he had collapsed from the heat — and then she saw the puddle of blood around his head.
Police quickly realized the teen might be a gang member, and a few calls later they found his contact at Houston police, a sergeant who showed up and identified Estuar as an informant.
The killing, the sergeant said according to court filings, looked like a hit in retaliation for helping police with an MS-13 case. A suspected local gang leader, Omar Torres, had allegedly ordered the murder from inside the county jail — where he was facing another murder charge for the brutal killing of Noe Mendez four months earlier.
After the hit on the teen, Torres was facing another charge: capital murder. Six others were targeted with the same charge, including five men who are accused of shooting the teen, and one accused of delivering the deadly orders.
When police began making arrests, most of the charges were brought in Fort Bend County. There, prosecutors had not decided whether to seek death sentences when they opted to transfer the proceedings to Harris County in the interest of continuity. By trying the cases in the same county, one prosecutor could handle them all.
“It was just about efficiency and consolidation,” Fort Bend County prosecutor Matt Banister said.
‘A really bad act’
After the switch, a committee of Harris County prosecutors decided to seek a death sentence against Torres.
“He was already in jail for murdering a guy; it was an MS-13 gang shooting,” Assistant District Attorney Colleen Barnett said in May. “He arranged to have that witness killed, and we believe that was just a really bad act that he committed.”
A few weeks later, the district attorney’s office decided to seek the same punishment for Herrera-Hernandez, who was also accused in another killing. It was the additional murders that made those two cases stand out; it’s less likely prosecutors will seek death sentences for the others accused in Estuar’s killing, Collins said. Two of the others charged aren’t eligible for capital punishment because they were under 18 at the time of the crime.
Though the committee’s decision in Herrera-Hernandez’s case marks the district attorney’s second move to seek the death penalty in a new case this year, Ogg’s record on capital punishment is more mixed. In the 20 months she’s been in office, the state has taken four killers — Duane Buck, Calvin Hunter, Michael Norris, and Robert Campbell — off death row. Last year, for the first time in more than three decades, no Harris County killers were executed and no new death sentences doled out.
At the same time, Ogg’s office has decided to no longer pursue a death sentence in at least nine cases, including some men who were sent back from death row for retrials.
But despite a more progressive approach overall, Ogg hasn’t eschewed capital punishment. Her office is pursuing death sentences in a handful of other cases that are grisly holdovers from previous administrations.
Two serial killers — Danny Bible and Anthony Shore — have been put to death under her watch, and a man convicted of killing a Houston police officer is scheduled for execution next year.