Plea deal in murder of Tech student stuns, angers parents
Suddenly, it was over. The first-degree murder case against the man who killed their son had dragged on for three years. Maria and Jorge Hernandez had made every trip — 1½ hours from their home in Albuquerque to the courtroom in Socorro — for every pretrial hearing, every meeting with the prosecutor, every attempt by the defense to convince a judge that accused killer Elijah Otero was too mentally unstable to stand trial; too mentally unstable to know what he was doing when he appeared to drive his mother’s Ford Explorer straight into Alex Hernandez; too mentally unstable to understand that he had admitted not once but twice to Socorro police that he had deliberately, angrily killed Alex.
Trial dates were set, then vacated. All the while, the Hernandezes repeatedly insisted that the case should go to
trial. There was a video of the killing. There was a confession. There had to be justice.
Trial was again scheduled, for Jan. 28 before state District Judge Mercedes Murphy. But last Monday — a day after what would have been Alex’s 29th birthday, two days before the third anniversary of the day he died — the Hernandezes traveled to Socorro for what was scheduled as a pretrial conference and learned that Otero, 25, had accepted a plea agreement. There would be no trial. Under the agreement, Otero pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and faces a maximum sentence of 15 years. Had he been convicted of first-degree murder, he would have had to serve a mandatory 30 years.
Sentencing is set for April 15 after a 60-day psychological evaluation is completed.
“We were stunned,” Jorge Hernandez said. “We had met with the prosecutor in December and discussed jury instructions. He told us he was preparing for trial.”
But Deputy District Attorney Ricardo Berry had also shared his concerns about the difficulty of getting a firstdegree murder conviction, at least in a jurisdiction such as Socorro, the Hernandezes said.
The defense could argue that Otero had diminished capacity, meaning he could not have formed the intent to kill as is required to convict under first-degree murder — this, even though the state’s expert witness was prepared to rebut that defense, they said.
“The main message we left his office with was that Socorro juries suck,” Jorge Hernandez said. “That he was considering a plea deal but that he was still working hard preparing for trial.”
The Hernandezes say they never got another call from Berry about a plea deal.
“He just didn’t want to fight anymore,” Marie Hernandez said. “It was a cop-out. It was such a copout.”
Berry declined to comment, saying in an email that he did not want to jeopardize the sentencing with any outof-court response.
It was another brutal blow in the horrific experience of losing Alex, a brilliant young man accomplished in chemistry, computers, philosophy, physics, psychology, filmmaking, activism, ethics and the environment, dogs and dubstep and drum circles, the arts, the heart, the world.
He was just months away from graduating from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro when he was killed Jan. 9, 2016, by Otero, a former Tech student.
For two days, his parents were not told he was dead, because of confusion over who was supposed to notify them. They were then forbidden to view their son’s body at the state Office of the Medical Investigator because of a mix-up between him and another motor vehicle fatality whose face the horrified Hernandezes were told was “deformed” by the crash.
Another mix-up came when the Hernandezes were told their son had committed suicide, which he hadn’t.
Otero, meanwhile, kept changing his story. But three days after the crash, surveillance video from a nearby auto shop prompted yet another version.
In the video, Alex is seen emerging from the front passenger’s side of Otero’s SUV parked on U.S. 60’s north shoulder. The two appear to exchange words. Otero drives off but makes a U-turn and heads back toward Alex, who walks and then runs to the edge of the highway, where he is struck from behind.
When confronted with the video, Otero admitted to police that he meant to hit Alex because he was mad at him for not getting out of the car so he could tend to his roommate’s dog.
Jorge Hernandez said over the holidays he pored over police reports and court documents to prepare a spreadsheet of the case, finding that Otero had lied to authorities 36 times. He had hoped his spreadsheet would be of help to the prosecutor.
“It was a strong case, we thought,” he said. “But what has happened with how it was handled is insufficient, it’s inadequate, it’s not enough.” And now, it’s all but over. He said he dreams of talking to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham about the discrepancy in penalties between first- and seconddegree murder, about how the criminal justice system affords more rights for the defendant than for the victim, how a citizen has little recourse when the prosecution fails, how Alex deserved better. How he deserved to live.