By Brian Rogers
The Houston Chronicle
HARRIS COUNTY, Texas — Jurors began deliberating in the capital murder trial of Juan Leonardo Quintero today after hearing prosecutors argue that he killed a Houston police officer because he feared spending 10 years in federal prison for re-entering the United States after being deported in 1999.
“Fear turned to anger and he assassinated Rodney Johnson as (Johnson) was filling out paperwork,” prosecutor John Jordan said in closing arguments in Quintero’s capital murder trial.
But defense attorney Danalynn Recer, who maintains that Quintero is not guilty by reason of insanity, told the jury that Jordan’s scenario doesn’t make sense.
Johnson pulled Quintero over for speeding on the afternoon of Sept. 21, 2006, and arrested him for not having a driver’s license.
Investigators have said Johnson missed a gun tucked in the 34-year-old illegal immigrant’s waistband during a pat-down search.
If convicted, Quintero, a Mexican citizen, will face life in prison without the possibility of parole or the death penalty. His trial is in its second week in state District Judge Joan Campbell’s court.
While Johnson was outside the patrol car, Quintero pulled the slide back to load a round in the chamber of his 9mm semi-automatic pistol, Jordan said.
“He had time to chamber a round,” Jordan said, pointing to Quintero with one hand and holding an unloaded gun in the other.
Jordan pulled the slide back and released it three times, letting the sound echo through the courtroom
“A police officer knows that sound.”
He said Quintero thought about his options and lay in wait for Johnson to return.
Quintero’s attorneys have conceded throughout the trial that he shot Johnson seven times as the officer filled out a booking sheet in the front seat.
Jordan went on to say Quintero shouted racial epithets at Johnson, who was black, as he died.
“How dare you?” Jordan said. “How dare you make it racial, as you take his life.”
Defense attorney Recer said the prosecution’s explanation for what happened didn’t make sense.
“There’s no way Mr. Quintero-Perez logically, rationally decided to shoot Officer Johnson,” Recer said.
“It’s a puzzle that we have to put together.”
Quintero’s defense team has worked to show he is not guilty of capital murder by reason of insanity.
Two psychologists and a neuropsychologist said a childhood fall caused brain damage that caused Quintero to perceive Johnson as a threat and take unreasonable action.
“Officer Johnson was a hero. He was a family man,” Recer said. “We have an explanation. It’s just not the quick, easy, bumper-sticker explanation the prosecution wants you to believe.”
Recer said she worked to figure out what was wrong with Quintero and what he was thinking.
“Because he sure wasn’t thinking like any of us,” she said.
She said Quintero’s “bad brain” has an overactive threat-detection system, usually assuaged by drinking about 24 beers a day. But on that day, Quintero had about six beers.
Quintero acknowledged in a videotaped statement that, although his hands were cuffed behind his back, he shot Johnson while locked in the backseat of the patrol car.
Copyright 2008 The Houston Chronicle