PAROLE BOARD DENIES GONZALEZ FREEDOM: CITES VIOLENT NATURE OF CRIMES, CONTINUING THREAT TO COMMUNITY

By Juan Montoya
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice Parole Review Board has denied the application of Marco Antonio Gonzales for early conditional release citing the violent nature of the crimes of which he was convicted and said he continues to be a danger to the community.

In its decision made May 24, the TDCJ Parole Review Board stated that: The record indicates that the instant offense has elements of brutality, violence, assaultive behavior, or conscious selection of victims' vulnerability indicating a conscious disregard for lives, safety, or property of others, such that the offender poses a continuing threat to public safety."

As a result of the denial by the parole board, Gonzales' release date is still scheduled for June 15, 2019.

The Victims Assistance Unit of the Department of public safety informed the victims who had protested his release that he had been denied his application for conditional release from the Stiles Unit of the Texas Dept. of Corrections Friday.

Gonzales was sentenced on November 4, 2016, in the 404th District Court on eight counts of aggravated assault of a public servant and one count of aggravated assault in retaliation. At an earlier trial, he was acquitted of the murder of Ivan Reyers, a co-worker at the Cameron County Rucker-Carrizales Detention Center.

His defense attorney, Ernesto Gamez, managed to convince a jury that Gonzalez had acted in self defense when he went to the house of his former lover Monica Robles armed with a loaded rifle and shot Reyes as he sat in a sofa.

Testimony that was barred from the earlier case indicated that he had told a neighbor of the woman the day before that he planned to return the next day and kill Reyes. Gamez – without the objections of Asst. District Attorney Peter Gilman – was able to exclude the testimony of the neighbor. When Gonzales arrived at the house with the weapon, the woman tried to keep him out but he grabbed her and used her as a shield when he entered the house and Reyes pointed his handgun at him. When Reyes lowered his gun, Gonzalez shot him in the chest with a 223 Bushmaster rifle and then in the back of the head as he tried to crawl out of the house.

During the murder trial he said he had gone to his former lover's house to return the rifle, but could not explain why he had taken it out of its case and had it fully loaded when he confronted her outside the home. Gamez pleaded with the jury to consider Gonzales' "state of mind."

The shooting occurred on June 4, 2014 at the woman's home on the 200 block of Orchid Path, off McAllen Road in northwest Brownsville.

After shooting Reyes, Gonzales held her hostage and stood of law enforcement officers for the next six hours, trading shots with them and shooting at Robles' brother as he walked away from the house. He shot at the officers and struck a SWAT vehicle, shattering a mirror. It wasn't until after his hostage managed to escape that officers captured Gonzales, who suffered minor injuries in the incident.

But if the Reyes family though that Gonzales had victimized them by killing their son, they were not prepared for the way they were victimized by the justice system in Cameron County. After Gamez managed to get him acquitted of the capital murder charges, he then faced 11 counts of aggravated assault of a public servant. The defense argued that two of the 11 counts constituted double jeopardy and Gilman did not object, settling for the nine other counts.

The jury found Gonzales guilty on the nine counts and that's when instructions by Judge Elia Cornejo-Lopez muddied the waters even further. In her initial charge to the jury, Cornejo told the jury they would be the ones to decide whether the sentences on the nine charges would run consecutively or concurrently. When Gamez objected and asked for a mistrial, she denied it but then instructed the jury that it would be up to her to decide how Gonzales would serve his sentences. That was not correct either, as courts are bound by state law on sentencing if the charges stemmed from the same incident.

They jury, thinking that by finding Gonzales guilty of the nine charges and assessing a five-year sentence on each, he would get 45 years in prison. When they found out that under state law – contrary to what the judge told them that it would be up to her – Gonzales would serve all of the five-year terms concurrently and would be released after serving only five years with credit for time served (two years), they protested to the DA and the court, with no avail.

Local police and other law enforcement officers who were targeted by Gonzales during the standoff protested the short sentence and both the DA and the judge blamed each other for the lenient sentence for his conviction on the eight counts of aggravated assault of a public servant and the one for retaliation.

As a result of the denial by the parole board, Gonzales' release date is still scheduled for June 15, 2019.