AS LOPEZ PAROLE HEARING NEARS, PLEAS FOR CLEMENCY

By Juan Montoya
Former Grupo Mazz frontsman Joe Lopez has been incarcerated in the Texas Dept. of Corrections Ramsey Unit in Rosesharon, Texas, south of Houston since October, 2006.
As the date for his parole hearing approaches, a group of supporters has drafted pleas for his release to David Gutiérrez, Presiding Officer the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles pointing out some of the facts they say should be considered in determining their decision on his release and that were not presented to the jury or known to the public.

Some of the facts they point out that were kept from the jury at the singer's trial by former Cameron County District Attorney Armando Villalobos are:

1. The 13-year-old girl who accused Joe Lopez, her uncle, had been living under his roof with her father in his effort to keep her from her adult boyfriend in Baytown that she had been seeing since she was 12.

2. The girl had been brought to Brownsville by her father (Joe's brother) to keep her from her boyfriend and mother who permitted a promiscuous lifestyle that included illegal drug use and sexual activity with an adult as a minor.

3. Lopez was recovering from a hip injury when the girl accused him of sexually abusing her. At the time of the trail she was visibly pregnant.

4. Three months before Lopez's trial, one of his defense attorneys – Michael Trejo (far right) – had acted as a conduit for a "referral" fee in a case involving the death of Villalobos' sister-in-law. In a supplement to the Villalobos indictment, "the government alleged that Villalobos referred a 2005 civil case involving his sister-in-law’s death to the law firm of Michael Cowen and Conrad Bodden. The case was settled for a substantial amount in April 2006. According to prosecutors, Villalobos received a referral fee in two checks, one for $60,000 and the other for $96,000. The $60,000 check was made payable to attorney Michael Trejo, who was not involved with the case, but funneled the money to Villalobos, the court record states."

(A newspaper account of Lopez's case states that : "Lopez was scheduled for trial on Aug. 28, but on that day, he fired his then attorneys Robert Lerma of Brownsville and Bennie E. Ray of Austin because he was upset that a plea agreement between his attorneys at the Cameron County District Attorneys Office had been released to the media and that he had received death threats.
Lopez was remanded to a Cameron County Jail after firing his attorneys.
He hired Young and Micheal Trejo (recommended by his manager because of his close ties to Villaobos) a couple of days later and was released from jail on Aug. 31 after posting a $25,000 bond.
Under the plea agreement, Lopez would have been allowed to plead guilty to a first-degree felony of injury to a child.
He would have also been put on probation for 10 years, undergone six months of intensive supervision, psychological evaluations and random drug testing.
Lopez would have also agreed to spend 120 days in jail and be immediately taken into custody, but he would not have had to register as a sex offender.)

5. Supporters say that as "a victim of the ‘Cash for Court Favors’ corruption, his case should have
been included in the charges against Villalobos, so in a sense the federal prosecutors were remiss
in their duties."

6. "The evidence used against Joe Lopez was derived from a pair of shorts of questionable origin.
The rape kit was negative; by waiting two days, the accuser ensured that negative results would
not necessarily discredit her story. Joe was convicted of rape based on trumped-up DNA
evidence, yielding results that were completely fraudulent and/or misinterpreted and overstated
by lab analyst Edna Zavala, and presented in a misleading way by the prosecution. The
‘evidence’ was improperly handled, and lacked a secure chain of custody. Zavala disregarded
‘skin cells from an unknown male,’ because, as she told the court, the DA only wanted evidence
that could be used against Joe."

7. In October 9, 2015 John Healy, the Fort Bend County DA issued a letter titlted "Notice Regarding DNA Results Prior to August 2015" where he said the FBI database to calculate genetic profiles between 1999 and 2001 contained discrepancies that cvould have affected certain DNA testing results between 1999 and 2015."

8. Healy further stated that the "Texas Foresnic Commission reported that, in cases where a sample was found to contain DNA sample from multiple sources (mixtures) 'changes in mixture interpretation have occurred possibly over the last 5-10 years' which, in combination with database corrections, have persuaded the commission to recommend confirming that current analytical protocols were used in preparing DNA results in a pending case."

9. In a June 30, 2015 letter from Brady W. Mills, Deputy Asst. Director of the Law Enforcement Support Crime Laboratory Service, he informs the law enforcement agencies throughout Texas that his agency was "informed by the FBI in May 2015 of errors in the FBI-developed population database. This database has been used by the Texas DPS Crime Laboratory system as well as many other crime laboratories across the country for calculating match statistics in criminal investigations and other types of human identification applications since 1999."

10. Mills also said that in implementing corrective action, "minor discrepancies were discovered in additional data used exclusively by the Texas DPS."


11. In the letter to the Board of Pardons and Paroles, they say that "Villalobos may have welcomed this opportunity to ‘settle scores’ with Joe, since he reportedly blamed the singer for a forfeited deposit on a performance at a political rally. At one point, Villalobos spoke out of turn when he told the media that plea bargain negotiations were underway; that same day, August 26, 2006, Joe and his attorneys presented themselves as ready for trial, and said there were no plea bargain negotiations at that time. Joe explains that he did not want to accept a plea bargain because he is innocent."

12. In their letter, supporters ask the Board of Pardons and Paroles: "Joe will be coming up for parole in October, and he doesn’t want to miss this opportunity to end his ordeal if he has still not been exonerated. His health and spirits have suffered greatly, and his 90-year-old mother is longing for him to come home. This is where you come in. The Board should recommend clemency. Joe is not a rapist seeking parole, but a victim of false allegations, lies, and corruption seeking justice. It is horrifying, and hard to believe, that an innocent man has served almost ten years for a crime that never happened, but it’s true. Please ask the Governor to grant ‘clemency for innocence.’"