Facts About How a Deportable Criminal Alien Was Left Free to Kill Are Excluded from Murder Trial
Texas family of victim aggrieved despite life sentence
By Todd Bensman on October 15, 2019
SAN ANTONIO, Texas — It was good that an elected state judge in San Antonio last week sentenced an illegally present Mexican national to life in a Texas prison after conviction at trial for murdering San Antonio college student Jared Vargas. But justice and broader public safety were not thoroughly served here, and the victim's family was left wanting.
The problem is that a key element of Vargas's murder was hermetically excluded from the trial: That murderer Ernesto Esquivel-Garcia was a criminal illegal immigrant from Mexico who could have been deported several times before he killed Vargas, but wasn't.
Before the trial started last month, the defendant's legal team filed a motion to exclude any "reference to, or insinuation concerning the status or nature of Ernesto Esquivel-Garcia's immigration or citizenship status" due to its potential "harmful effect" and its "highly prejudicial content".
https://cis.org/Bensman/Facts-About-How-Deportable-Criminal-Alien-Was-Left-Free-Kill-Are-Excluded-Murder-Trial