Guarding Death's Door

(9 of 10)

Characteristically, Earle picked an interesting mix for the committee. One member is Ellen Halbert, a nationally known victims' advocate who in 1986 was raped, stabbed, beaten in the head with a hammer and left for dead. The only nonlawyer on the committee, she is director of Earle's victim-witness division. Other members include Patricia Barrera, a devoutly Roman Catholic Latina who has a stained-glass cross affixed to her window and tries to reconcile her church's opposition to the death penalty with her duties as a prosecutor; Buddy Meyer, the gruff head of the trial division, who has a handlebar mustache and a picture of a Texas Ranger on his wall; and LaRu Woody, director of the family-justice division, who possesses a strong libertarian streak--she has a SMOKING PERMITTED sign in her office even though she doesn't smoke. First assistant D.A. Rosemary Lehmberg and five other veteran prosecutors round out the group.

The members met to consider the Delamora case several months before the trial, which was held last July. The death committee struggled with this question: Did Delamora know he was firing at a cop? Getting a capital-murder conviction would require proving he did. Meyer, the trial-division director, explains the reservations in the room this way: "The defendant was at home with his wife and children, and it was dark, and they were in the bedroom watching TV, and there was this loud banging on the side of their mobile home. The defendant felt there was evidence that these were people trying to break into his trailer and steal his dope and harm his family."

In the end, though, most members sided with the cops. Other police officers at Delamora's trailer that night said they had clearly and repeatedly made their presence known. Barrera, the devout Catholic, voted against seeking death, as she usually does, but she was in the minority. Most people in the room went with their prosecutorial gut: "It's really difficult for prosecutors to be fully objective about cop killers," says assistant D.A. Case. "Some of us had doubts, and we knew Ronnie would have to make an effort at resolving them in that particular case... I don't know everything that he was thinking when he made that one. I do know it was very hard."

It's likely that Earle went with his gut too. If he has any doubts, he doesn't seek death. He decided that the state would go ahead with its capital-murder case, relying on the jury to determine whether Delamora knew he was shooting at a police officer. But Earle knew jurors could never be dead sure about that, and he took death off the table. "We believe we have to look at it that they are guilty to a moral certainty, almost beyond any doubt whatsoever," says Case. "That's not the legal standard, but it's ours."

At the trial, the jury found Delamora guilty of capital murder, and because death wasn't an option, he automatically received what Texas law calls a "life" sentence in prison--no possibility of parole for 40 years. That wasn't enough for many Texans, who were furious: Ruiz's widow Bernadette and his boss, the county sheriff, were both quoted in the American-Statesman as criticizing the decision not to seek death. Texas attorney general John Cornyn, who was in the midst of a successful campaign to become a U.S. Senator, publicly attacked Earle. Nor was Delamora pleased; he is appealing.