Man condemned inhouston killings ordered off death row
Texas’ highest appellate court Wednesday resentenced a death row inmate to life in prison because of his intellectual disability.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals commuted the death sentence of 50-year-old Gilmar Guevara, agreeing with a Harris County court’s assessment that the disability made him ineligible for execution, records show.
“This is indeed a happy day,” said Gretchen Sween, Guevara’s attorney. “I am hoping to be able to speak to Mr. Guevara via phone soon and get the word to his loved ones in both Houston and far-away rural El Salvador. Mr. Guevara is a man of sincere faith; so I know whom he will be thanking for the chance to embrace his grown children again one day soon after all of these years.”
Sween and the Harris County District Attorney’s Office agreed that an execution wasn’t constitutional in Guevara’s case and struck an agreement in April to recommend a life sentence. State District Judge DaSean Jones agreed with both parties and issued the ultimate recommendation.
“Psychiatric experts from both sides agreed that he is intellectually disabled and therefore not eligible for the death penalty; his crimes were horrible and he deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison,” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said.
Guevara is the seventh person in Texas to have a death sentence commuted because of intellectual disability since 2017, when inmate Bobby Moore’s case first went to the U.S. Supreme Court and questioned the way courts determine mental ability, according to the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.
Executing intellectually disabled defendants has been illegal since a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision, but attorneys disagreed over how to interpret the law.
That largely changed in 2019. Moore won his case after 39 years on Texas’ death row, helping definewhat constitutes an intellectual disability, and possibly putting the wheels in motion for commutations in local district attorneys’ offices. Moore was resentenced to life in prison and granted parole in June.
Executive Director Kristin Houlé said she feels it’s notable that local prosecutors backed many of the latest efforts to overturn death sentences involving defendants with intellectual disabilities.
“These cases overall reflect the changing death penalty landscape in Texas,” she said. “This reflects the tremendous turnover we’ve had with district attorneys in recent years, especially in jurisdictions that have used the death penalty most often.”
Guevara will be reprocessed and transferred to another unit in the coming days after spending 19 years awaiting execution for fatally shooting two store clerks during a botched robbery in 2000, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. The Texas Tribune first reported his commutation.
He remains convicted in the capital murder of Tae Youk, 48, of South Korea, and Gerardo Yaxon, 21, of Guatemala, at the Town Market in southwesthouston. He confessed to the slayings, but his attorneys argued for years that he had ineffective assistance of counsel at his 2001 trial.
They also contended that his defense at the time didn’t present any evidence about his intellectual abilities. Two neuropsychologists since then affirmed his cognitive impairment.
Guevara’s problems have been traced to before his birth in El Salvador, his current attorney said in court records.
His mother had measles while pregnant, and she drank water and ate fish from a river contaminated with toxins.
The defendant was continually exposed to environmental, emotional and physical trauma throughout his developmental years, and he drank from the river until his teens.
He hit his head around age 8, and was exposed to numerous horrific deaths during the civil war in El Salvador.
He didn’t begin talking or walking until age 4 and didn’t complete the fourth grade, according to the records. And as an adult, Guevara often struggled speaking and had trouble with basic problem solving.