Retrial begins for deputy’s husband accused in slaying
Prosecutors gave a blow-byblow description Tuesday of the way Terry Thompson, the husband of a fired sheriff’s deputy, suffocated a yHouston father last year by applying a chokehold while straddling him in the parking lot of a Crosby-area restaurant.
The details came in the first day of testimony as Thompson’s second murder trial began.
“They tried to pull Terry Bryan Thompson off John Hernandez,” prosecutor Sarah Mickelson Seeley told jurors in opening statements.
It is the second time Thompson, a 42-year-old railroad worker, has been tried on allegations that he intentionally killed 24year-old Hernandez on May 28, 2017, a death that triggered protests over disparate treatment of law enforcement personnel and their family.
Thompson entered a plea of not guilty.
His attorney, Scot Courtney, did not give an opening statement. He has long maintained that Thompson had the right to hold Hernandez down after Thompson apparently punched him in the eye during the latenight confrontation.
“Clearly it was too forceful because it resulted in Mr. Hernandez’s death,” Courtney has said. “But he had every right to restrain him until the police got there.”
Hernandez’s family and supporters filled one side of state District Judge Kelli Johnson’s court while a half-dozen of Thompson’s supporters sat on the other side.
Seeley acknowledged that Hernandez was so intoxicated that his wife directed him to take her and her daughter to the Denny’s near their home in Crosby instead of the restaurant they were planning to go to.
Hernandez was apparently urinating in the parking lot when Thompson, his teenage daughter and two of her friends drove up. The teens went inside while Thompson confronted Hernandez — an exchange that was caught on surveillance video.
“You can see him on the video,’ she said. “He’s making loud, big gestures.”
Seeley said jurors would see several videos, including camera phone video that ignited a series of protests in downtown Houston with activists wearing “Justice for John” T-shirts and signs.
The high-profile case made national headlines after that video.
In June, a mistrial was declared after a Harris County jury could not agree on a verdict, although Thompson came within a few votes of being acquitted.
Courtney has maintained that Thompson was attacked and responded by taking an intoxicated Hernandez to the ground and holding him down as they waited for deputies to come.
Thompson’s wife, Chauna Thompson, who was then a Harris County sheriff ’s deputy, is also charged with murder, accused of helping to hold Hernandez down. She was fired by Sheriff Ed Gonzalez after the incident.