Widow implored man to release chokehold
Defense in retrial calls witnesses to give ‘full picture’ of fatal night
The widow of a 24-year-old man who died after being strangled in a chokehold last year at a Crosby-area Denny’s restaurant sobbed as she told a jury how she begged the murder defendant to release his grip on her commonlaw husband.
“He said, ‘I can’t breathe,’” said widow Maria Toral, tearfully recalling her husband’s words before she implored he be released. “I told him, ‘He can’t breathe, let him go!’”
Toral was one of three witnesses called by the defense attorneys Tuesday to testify in the retrial of Terry Thompson, who is accused of the deadly conduct at the popular diner on May 28, 2017, the Sunday night before Memorial Day.
Defense attorney Scot Courtney has said the prosecution did not give “the full picture” of what happened that night, so he expects to call as many as a dozen witnesses including some that may seem adversarial.
Thompson, a burly 42-yearold railroad worker married to a former Harris County sheriff’s deputy, faces life in prison if convicted of the murder of John Hernandez His defense attorneys have argued that Thompson restrained an intoxicated Hernandez because the 24-year-old started to fight him outside the restaurant.
Thompson and his wife, Chauna, were charged with murder after cellphone video surfaced of the late-night incident. She was fired from the sheriff’s office, and Terry Thompson went on trial in June, but a mistrial was declared after jurors deadlocked over whether Thompson was acting in self-defense or was criminally liable for Hernandez’s death.
Thompson has maintained that shortly after he arrived in the parking lot of the restaurant with his teenage daughter and her friends, he called out to Hernandez to quit urinating in public.
Lawyers for Thompson have said Hernandez approached and threw the first punch, giving Thompson a black eye. Hernandez ended up being punched and held down by Thompson, and his wife assisted.
The case attracted international attention after the cellphone video was released showing Thompson on Hernandez’s back, holding him in a chokehold, as the father sputtered for breath. The video spurred a massive protest in downtown Houston over police brutality that led to the Thompson’s being indicted.
On Monday, prosecutors rested their case after almost a week of testimony without calling Hernandez’s widow, but the defense made her its first witness.
On Tuesday, the defense also called a Channelview man who testified that minutes before Thompson arrived, he and Hernandez almost got in to a fight. The confrontation ended when Hernandez shouted across the parking lot that he had a gun.
Jurors later heard from 61-yearold James Leon Keith, who acknowledged he intervened to keep observers, bystanders and the person who filmed the cellphone video away from the struggle between Thompson and Hernandez.
“I’m just trying to keep everybody away from it, so they could resolve the issue,” testified Keith, a motorcycle enthusiast. He can be seen and heard on the cellphone video wearing a black biker’s vest and black gloves.
He also acknowledged that he advised Thompson, while he was choking Hernandez, that, “he had made his point.”
“He had got John Hernandez subdued, correct,” he said as prosecutor John Jordan cross-examined him.
Keith was argumentative on the stand, and was forced to acknowledge that some things he testified to earlier in the day were different than what he had said in the past.
On Tuesday, he told jurors he heard Hernandez tell Thompson he had a gun, but he never said that during police interviews at the scene. He also testified that he saw Hernandez punch Thompson in the head, but told police at the scene that he had not actually seen any contact.
“Don’t try to make me look like the bad guy in this,” Keith told the prosecutor during cross-examination.