San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
SERIAL CRIMES, NO HARD TIME
Justice system seems stymied by repeat DWI offender
Before, he always had gotten off with probation. This time, prison was a distinct possibility, and James Preston Green knew it.
He stood before state District Judge Ron Rangel on Oct. 24 with a long rap sheet.
He had just pleaded no contest to a felony charge of driving while intoxicated — his fourth DWI conviction in the past decade. His blood alcohol content was more than twice the legal limit when he rear-ended another vehicle at high speed on Wurzbach Parkway in January.
At the time of the crash, Green was on probation for an earlier felony DWI in Guadalupe County.
In Rangel’s court, he also was facing two felony charges of domestic violence, one for an incident in which his girlfriend allegedly was choked until she passed out.
For the latest DWI alone, he was facing two to 20 years.
But Green, 37, would not see the inside of a penitentiary.
Instead, Rangel approved a plea bargain recommended by the Bexar County district attorney’s office that gave Green more probation. As part of the deal, the domestic violence charges were dismissed.
That day, Green continued a yearslong streak of evading accountability for his serial DWIs and other crimes.
Police and court records show he repeatedly has violated conditions of probation, lied to law enforcement and berated and threatened the officers who chased and arrested him.
His good fortune in avoiding in-
carceration calls for explanation. Yet there are no tidy answers.
His father, Jimmy Green, is a prominent businessman and philanthropist who owns J. Green Jewelers in Stone Oak.
The elder Green has attended a weekly men’s Bible study led by Bexar County District Attorney Nico LaHood.
He was at one of those earlymorning sessions on the day Rangel granted his son probation. He posted a photo of the Bible study on Facebook with a jubilant caption: “Nico La Hood’s mens bible study the best I ever attend!!! Men come join us!!!”
In an interview, Jimmy Green said his relationship with LaHood played no role in how his son’s latest criminal case was handled.
The younger Green said he has turned his life around since the January crash and has been “sober ever since.”
The DA’s office said in a statement that LaHood “was never directly involved” in Green’s case and that the sentence was “appropriate … based on the facts and circumstances surrounding this offense.”
Yet other defendants have been dealt harsher punishments for repeat DWIs.
A man named Jose Dolores Ramirez-Zapatero, for example, pleaded no contest to his third DWI in Bexar County in 2009 and was granted three years’ probation. When he was arrested again for felony DWI in 2015 and pleaded guilty, state District Judge Sid Harle sentenced him to three years in prison.
Rangel deflected responsibility when asked about the probationary sentence he gave Green, a four-time offender with a history of violating probation. He said the DA’s office made the deal; he merely approved it.
“Judges in most circumstances don’t really have the ability to reject a plea bargain,” Rangel said. “When it comes to plea bargains, they never tell me what the strengths and weaknesses (of a case) are. I never have any idea.”
A measured approach to an offender’s first few DWIs sometimes is appropriate, said Jaime Gutierrez, executive director of Mothers Against Drunk Driving in Texas. Ignition interlock devices, which prevent a car from starting if the operator is intoxicated, can protect the public and spare a defendant jail time.
But there are limits, Gutierrez said.
“After the third offense, you should get some prison time,” Gutierrez said. “I mean, come on.”
He added, “You know what’s going to be tough? When (Green) hurts somebody. And everybody’s going to look back and say, ‘If only this or only that.’ But then it will be too late.”
FIRST ARREST
Overlapping periods of probation, granted again and again even as he repeatedly violated their conditions, have been a way of life for Green since his first DWI arrest about a decade ago.
About 5:30 a.m. Jan. 14, 2008, Green drove his Kia Rio past a stop sign in his parents’ North Side neighborhood, jumped a curb and crashed into a neighbor’s front yard.
When police arrived, Green, then 26, got out and “almost fell to the ground,” a police report stated.
As the officer drove him to jail, Green boasted that he was “personal friends” with then-Bexar County DA Susan Reed and Police Chief William McManus, accord- ing to the police report. He told the officer he “was going to get fired and be a Meter-Maid and working at Walmart,” the report said.
The jeweler’s son offered the officer a Rolex watch in exchange for his freedom, and he promised not to “sue” if he were taken home, according to the report.
Green “told me I should arrest some real criminals like rapists, drug dealers and murderers,” the officer wrote. He said Green also urged him to arrest some “Mexicans” and African-Americans, referring to the latter by the Nword, according to the report.
In custody, Green banged on the cell walls and yelled. He was released the next day on condition he submit to random drug and alcohol testing.
While awaiting trial, he was arrested in July 2009, again on a charge of drunken driving. An officer had observed him driving 55 mph in a 30-mph zone and drifting from lane to lane.
A judge released Green on condition he use an ignition interlock device to measure his blood alcohol content before he could drive.
Soon, he was in a different kind of legal trouble. In May 2010, Melissa Manny, Green’s then-girlfriend and the mother of his daughter, was hospitalized with bruises on her head, a police report said.
Manny told police that an intoxicated Green punched her “with a closed fist several times on the right side of her head” as she was driving, “causing severe pain around her ear and head.”
Green was charged with assault.
In January 2011, Green pleaded guilty to the 2009 DWI. Bexar County Court-at-Law No. 2 Judge Jason Wolff approved a sentence of four months’ probation; Green no longer had to use the ignition interlock device.
Soon after, he violated probation by testing positive for alcohol, court records show. Nonetheless, Wolff ended Green’s probation in May 2011, then dismissed the 2008 DWI. (The judge declined to comment. )
A different judge dismissed the assault charge because of a “missing witness.” Manny declined to comment.
That same month, on May 29, 2011, Green was driving a pickup in Comal County when a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper pulled him over and charged him with DWI — his third such arrest.
‘IT’S AN ADDICTION’
On July 5, 2011, Jimmy Green called police.
His son was “very drunk and out of control” at the family’s home, a police report said. He had “damaged several items in the house,” and the father was “afraid (Green) was going to hurt someone.”
The younger Green was “roaming the neighborhood wearing only a pair of shorts,” the report said. An officer eventually found him back at the house, “kicking the front door and trying to force his way inside.” “Stop!” the officer said.
Green fled, running to the back yard and crawling under a utility shed. He was arrested and charged with evading detention. He pleaded no contest and was granted six months’ probation.
In January 2012, Green pleaded no contest to the Comal County DWI — his second such conviction — before Court-at-Law No. 1 Judge Randy Gray, who put him on probation for a year. Green paid more than $1,000 in fines and court costs and was ordered to use an ignition interlock device for six months and abstain from drugs and alcohol for a year.
Gray, in an interview, defended the sentence as appropriate.
He said the “vast majority” of people convicted of a first DWI never are convicted again. Of those who offend a second time, about 75 percent will be convicted of a third DWI, the judge said.
The reason, Gray said, is alcoholism.
“It’s an addiction,” he said. “It’s a brain addiction.”
For that reason, Gray requires most defendants convicted of a second DWI to complete an accountability program that includes treatment for substance abuse.
Repeat DWI offenders who fail to treat their addictions, the judge said, are “the folks that are going to kill people. They’re the ones who drive the wrong way around 1604.”
Gray, however, did not require Green to complete the program.
“We’re limited because he didn’t reside here,” the judge said. “If they don’t live in the jurisdiction, I really can’t get them here.”
Green violated his probation by consuming alcohol in September 2012, court records show.
He still was on probation when he was arrested a fourth time for DWI, this time in Guadalupe County.
‘FORGIVE ME’
About 3:20 a.m. March 31, 2013, Green was weaving from side to side in a pickup on FM 78 when he nearly hit an oncoming vehicle, a police dashcam video shows. A Guadalupe County sheriff ’s deputy turned on his emergency lights and siren, but Green kept driving.
Green finally pulled over in Marion. He immediately got out, opened the rear passenger door and leaned inside, scattering marijuana around the pickup, according to a police report.
The deputy drew his weapon. “Let me see your hands, bud.” Green turned around and nearly fell over, then walked toward the deputy with his hands in his pockets.
“Hey, I don’t want any trouble,” Green said, slurring his speech, according to the dashcam video.
“Put your hands up on the truck right here,” the deputy said, aiming his weapon at Green.
Instead, Green walked back to the open pickup door and threw a glass pipe inside, the report said. The deputy approached with his weapon drawn, then holstered it and handcuffed Green.
“I don’t want any trouble, dude,” Green said. “It’s Easter. I have to be the Easter bunny. I’m driving home to be the Easter bunny right now.”
The deputy searched the pickup, where he found the pipe and a half-empty “half gallon of vodka,” the police report said.
The deputy asked Green to take a field sobriety test. Green requested that they move “away from the video.”
“No, that’s got to stay on,” the deputy said. “That’s policy.” “Why was I even stopped?” “You were stopped because you were weaving all over the road,” the deputy said, “and you crossed the center line and almost hit another vehicle.”
“I wasn’t going to hit somebody,” Green said. “You know that.”
“You almost did,” the deputy said.
“Sorry I crossed over the lanes,” Green said. “If you forgive me this one time, I’ll make a big difference. I will. I promise.”
At a medical center, Green became “belligerent and profane,” and deputies had to draw blood forcibly, the report said.
Green’s blood-alcohol content was nearly three times the legal limit.
Because he already had two drunken driving convictions, this time he faced a felony DWI charge punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
Green pleaded guilty in November 2013, and state District Judge Gary Steel sentenced him to six years of community supervision. It came with a variety of conditions, including 10 days in Guadalupe County Jail, random drug and alcohol testing, and participation in an outpatient substance abuse program. Green paid a fine and court costs totaling more than $2,000.
In Comal County, Judge Gray extended Green’s probation for another year. He released Green from probation in 2015.
Two years later, Green began violating his Guadalupe County probation, testing positive for marijuana twice.
Soon after, he was arrested once again.
‘AFRAID OF JAMES’
Julia Andreu had been dating Green for about three months when, on the night of Aug. 14, 2017, he “grabbed her by the head and pushed her,” causing her to hit her face, elbows and knees on the ground, a police report said.
Green had been violent with her in the past, she told police, who photographed her injuries at the scene.
Just over two weeks later, at 9 p.m. Aug. 31, 2017, Green showed up at Andreu’s house on the North Side and began banging on the door. He was “very intoxicated” and accused her of cheating, she told police.
When Andreu opened the door, Green “slammed her to the ground causing her to hit the back of her head causing it to bleed,” according to a police report.
Andreu ran to her bedroom. Green “threw her down on the floor … and was choking her to the point that she passed out for a bit, and that’s when (Green) stopped,” the report said, citing Andreu’s account.
Green took her phone and drove off. Andreu called police, who once again photographed her injuries — this time to the neck and head — and obtained an arrest warrant for Green.
Her injuries included a “significant gash” on her head, a cut to the forehead and “strangulation marks” on her neck, police spokesman Jesse Salame said.
A Bexar County grand jury indicted Green on a felony assault charge, accusing him of “impeding the normal breathing or circulation of the blood of Julia Andreu by applying pressure to the throat or neck,” a crime punishable by two to 10 years in prison.
Andreu applied for a protective order to keep him away from her.
“I am afraid of James,” Andreu wrote in an affidavit. “I fear that when James drinks he is not himself and he becomes aggressive. I don’t know what he is capable of doing when he is intoxicated. It is for this reason I am seeking legal protection.”
It was the sort of case that should have received special attention from the DA’s office.
Citing a backlog of family violence cases, LaHood had created a task force of 10 prosecutors shortly after he took office. They were supposed to go after people who commit repeated domestic assaults and violate protective orders. “Assaults involving choking” were to get special attention.
On Oct. 5, 2017, an officer went looking for Green at his parents’ house, where he had lived for years, according to court records.
The officer was there to serve Green with a notice to appear in court in two weeks for a hearing on the protective order — a civil court proceeding separate from the assault case.
The officer left without seeing Green. In a court record, the officer wrote: “Bad address per father.”
After Green failed to show up for the hearing, the case was dropped and never reopened, court records show.
Judge Antonia Arteaga of the 57th Civil District Court, who handled the case, declined to comment. She referred questions to Children’s Court Judge Peter Sakai, who serves as a spokesman for Bexar County’s civil courts.
Sakai said it was the DA’s responsibility to follow up on the protective order.
“If these cases are dropped, then the court on its own does not reset the case,” Sakai said. “The DA’s office is most typically responsible for getting it back on the docket.”
Sakai noted a leadership vacuum in the DA’s office since LaHood’s defeat in the Democratic primary. LaHood lost to defense attorney Joe Gonzales, who will replace him in January.
“You could get conspiratorial,” Sakai said, referring to the fate of Andreu’s protective order, “but I would say — nobody cared.”
‘RIDICULOUS’
About 10 p.m. Jan. 13, 2018, Green smashed his Kia Soul into the back of a Toyota Camry at a “very high rate of speed” on Wurzbach Parkway near Nacogdoches Road, according to a police report.
The crash caused the Camry to spin out and strike a concrete median. Pieces of the car were scattered in the road by the time police arrived. The three people in the Camry were wincing in pain, the police report said.
After the crash, Green climbed from his vehicle and ran. An officer found him under the Wurzbach Parkway bridge, along with two witnesses who apparently had chased him there.
“Stop!” the officer yelled. Green resumed running, leading the officer on a foot chase over railroad tracks before stumbling onto his hands and knees. He refused to lie down, so the officer used pepper spray and forced him into handcuffs.
Green was led back to the crash site, where he “could not be spoken to due to his aggressive nature and lack of cooperation,” the police report said.
Eventually, Green claimed he had been “carjacked.” He told police an assailant had put a gun to his head, then grabbed the wheel of his Kia and caused the wreck.
Police weren’t buying it. Green was charged with yet another felony DWI and with evading arrest.
He was ordered again to use an ignition interlock device. Court records show he failed to do so.
This latest run-in with the law was a violation of his probation in Guadalupe County — the 10th violation recorded by authorities there. Judge Steel responded by extending Green’s community supervision for two more years. (Steel did not respond to a request for comment.)
Guadalupe County Attorney Dave Willborn defended the decision. He said that if his office had pushed to revoke Green’s probation and have him sent to prison, it would have created complications for Bexar County’s felony DWI case against Green. Willborn said his office stood down temporarily as a “courtesy.”
“I’m certain my prosecutors fully expected that he was going to get sentenced to prison in Bexar County,” Willborn said.
That didn’t happen. When the case came before Judge Ron Rangel in October, he gave Green six years’ probation.
Willborn said he was “surprised but not shocked” by the sentence.
“I think usually when you see a person on probation for felony DWI, and they violate that probation by committing another DWI, I think a prosecutor’s general inclination is, ‘Hey, this person needs to go to the penitentiary,’” he said.
Willborn’s predecessor agreed.
“If you’re on felony probation and you commit new felonies, you would generally be sent to prison if you’re not complying,” said Heather McMinn, who was Guadalupe County DA at the time of Green’s 2013 conviction there.
“From what it sounds like, he should have been going to prison now,” she added. “It’s ridiculous.” ‘CONTINUOUS VIOLENCE’
If the justice system proved illequipped to punish Green for his repeated DWIs, it seemed powerless to address his girlfriend’s allegations of domestic violence.
Months after he is alleged to have choked her into unconsciousness, Andreu again was romantically involved with Green, according to a police report. She vacillated between wanting to see him prosecuted and retracting her allegations — a familiar pattern in domestic violence cases.
On Jan. 3 of this year, the day the felony assault case against Green was set to go to trial, Andreu went to the law office of his defense attorney and signed an affidavit in which she exonerated Green.
She blamed herself for her injuries, contradicting her previous accounts and her affidavit seeking a protective order.
“One of my fetishes is to be choked during sex. I requested Preston to choke me while he had sex with me,” the new affidavit said, identifying Green by his middle name.
Andreu opened the gash on top of her head when she “slipped” and fell, the affidavit said.
The trial was postponed until March, only to be pushed back. On the new trial date, May 9, it was postponed yet again.
At 1:41 a.m. the next morning, police responded to a report of an assault in progress in the parking lot of a North Side bar.
An officer found a sobbing Andreu with “bruising and abrasions” around her left eye. She told police she had just gotten into her car when Green appeared out of nowhere, banged on the driver side door, then wrenched it open and said, “I found you.”
She said Green grabbed her by the hair and threw her to the ground.
Noting Green’s previous arrests for family violence, police charged him that night with continuous violence against family, a felony.
Later that day, Andreu told a crime victims liaison that she was “in fear” of Green, according to notes on the case in an internal court system. The next day, Andreu called the same liaison to retract her allegation.
On Oct. 24, standing before Judge Rangel, Green escaped both assault charges. The choking case from 2017 and the May charge of continuous family violence were wrapped into his DWI plea bargain and dismissed “for further investigation.”
Reached by phone several weeks ago, Andreu expressed concern for her safety.
“He should be in prison,” Andreu said of Green. “His family is willing to pay so much to keep him out of prison. Daddy gets him out of everything.”
She did not respond to subsequent calls about her shifting accounts.
‘I MADE A MISTAKE’
On a recent Wednesday, Jimmy and James Green stood at a counter inside J. Green Jewelers in a shopping center off North Loop 1604 West, talking to a customer. The son has worked at his father’s store for years as a sales manager.
Just inside the entrance was a towering portrait of Jimmy Green in full regalia as Rey Feo LXVI, an honor bestowed after he raised $204,000 in scholarship money to become the “Ugly King” of Fiesta 2014. Nearby, his bejeweled crown sat in a glass display case.
Interviewed in a conference room, the elder Green said it was “absolutely not true” that his relationship with LaHood influenced the handling of his son’s most recent DWI.
“That was between his attorney and the prosecutors,” he said. “Nico LaHood is not a personal close friend of mine by any means. Everything we have done is on the up and up. I’m a very straight, honest businessperson.”
James Green abruptly entered the room, agitated that his criminal history would constitute news.
“I made a mistake on the 13th of January,” he said, referring to the crash on Wurzbach Parkway. “I’ve been sober ever since. The judge saw it. The prosecutor saw it. And they gave me a little bit of a break. … I could’ve gone to prison, dude.”
A burly man with the word “truth” tattooed on his chest, the jeweler’s son cast himself as a victim. He bemoaned the costs of rehab, the restrictions imposed by probation and that he now has felonies on his record.
“I can’t leave Bexar County,” he said.
He also insisted that both Manny and Andreu had falsely accused him of assault. He presented the affidavit signed by Andreu in January.
“They weren’t, like, injuries, man,” he said. “They were hardly there.”
Jimmy Green insisted his son, after his latest arrest, had been transformed by religion.
“AA has brought him back to his faith,” he said, “back to trusting God to guide and protect him into becoming the man he wants to be.”
At Green’s October sentencing, Rangel suspended his driver’s license for two years. But Green’s lawyer, Shawn Brown, hopes to have him back behind the wheel before then.
“We’re in the process of getting him an occupational license,” he said.
bchasnoff@express-news.net