Inept Texas Prosecutor Let an Accused Killer Walk

EL PASO, Texas—When 63-year-old Juan Garcia Flores was killed in February of last year, his daughter’s life was shattered, and the memory of his violent death still grips her when she speaks of him.

“The loss of my father has upset the whole existence of my family, upside down, in every way. Him not being here has been more than a tragedy,” said Keila Reyes, sitting in a chair in what was once her father’s room, wiping her tears.

“He lived here. This was his room. And it happened here,” she said, pointing to a corner where her father’s body was found a year ago with multiple knife wounds in his back, the corner where she had cleaned the bloody signs of struggle from the floor and walls.

Flores was living in the family business, a large office warehouse, nicely renovated, when he was killed. Police said in a press release at the time that they had a murder suspect: a 20-year-old Mexican man named Ivan Gabaldon. Cops and prosecutors alleged that Gabaldon attacked Flores and fled in the wounded man’s truck. Gabaldon’s defense lawyer, Omar Carmona, told The Daily Beast that he had intended to address those allegations during trial, which never transpired.

Workers showing up at about 7 a.m. discovered Flores’ body, according to Reyes.

The details of the killing are still hotly contested. An affidavit obtained by local media, citing the suspect’s statements, suggested that it was a sexual transaction gone awry, with Gabaldon claiming he acted in self defense when Flores tried to coerce him into acts he did not consent to, including by threatening him with a knife.

Flores’ daughter told The Daily Beast that her father was “not an aggressive person at all” and also said that the sexual details that are alleged to have happened unfairly distract from what she believes is the only important factor: “My father was murdered and he deserves justice.”

“What does it matter what he did in his private life? Everyone has a private life,” she said, and she also dismissed the possibility of her father being involved in the LGBQT lifestyle. “That is not who my father was. Talk to anyone who knew him,” she said.

Prosecutors alleged that Gabaldon sold Flores’ truck for $200 in one of the surrounding neighborhoods—a fact they assert is an indication of a robbery motive, another claim the attorney intended to litigate at trial. Gabaldon was arrested a few days later roaming the neighborhood, and has maintained he killed Flores in self-defense, according to court documents and his attorney. He pleaded not guilty.

Then the prosecution fell apart—leaving the story open to speculation and, for Keila Reyes, anger.

She’s been mourning her father while carrying that burden of anger, thrust upon her by what she—and a growing number of residents—describe as an absurdly dysfunctional government agency: The El Paso District Attorney’s office.

The DA’s office—mired in an unprecedented backlog of stalled court proceedings—is under blistering criticism for what many say is a pattern of woeful ineffectiveness. Under the leadership of District Attorney Yvonne Rosales since 2020, the office has allowed hundreds of criminal cases to sit unattended beyond legal deadlines, which recently led to a surge of mass dismissals to ensure that suspects are afforded their constitutional rights to speedy trials. The El Paso Public Defender's Office has stated publicly that more than a thousand additional cases are also queued for possible dismissal.

Generally, Rosales has disputed that the dismissal of cases is on her, pointing to the coronavirus pandemic, understaffing, and a backlog she claims she inherited after being elected in 2020.

Now Rosales is facing an unusual petition, filed Wednesday by Carmona, seeking her removal from office, as El Paso Matters reported, and a judge was assigned on Friday to oversee the removal effort.

Along with the dismissals are what critics describe as the DA’s courtroom blunders—one so colossal that it has profoundly damaged the lives of Keila Reyes and her family.

In December 2021, District Court Judge Alyssa Perez was presiding over a hearing for the trial of Gabaldon, the 20-year-old accused of murdering Keila’s father. The lead prosecutor, Assistant El Paso County District Attorney Curtis Cox, offered to release Gabaldon without bond in exchange for a delay in the trial date. But when the defense didn’t agree to that, Cox said he wanted to re-indict Gabaldon for capital murder—upping the punishment to a death sentence when the defense didn’t play ball.

Carmona, the El Paso criminal defense attorney representing Gabaldon, told The Daily Beast that he was shocked at the move. The judge agreed and declared the DA office’s attempted maneuver to be a retaliatory one, and dismissed the case, though prosecutors are appealing that decision.

When she issued her ruling, Judge Perez admitted being conflicted about releasing a suspected murderer because of a blundering prosecution.

“I certainly did not expect to be in a position to see the state of Texas literally disregard some of the most serious cases, to include this one,” she said during the hearing. “It does not in many ways feel like justice, because at the end of the day we are dealing with circumstances and allegations that are very serious. There are families of victims that are not being well served when cases in the DA’s office can just be disregarded. There are so many troubling things.”

Curtis Cox, the assistant district attorney prosecuting Gabaldon during the hearing, sat stone-faced while the judge admonished the prosecutors’ poor trial preparation and vindictive actions in the case, and said nothing in response. (When effort was made by The Daily Beast to contact Cox, a district attorney spokesman declined the interview, citing the pending appeal of the dismissal, and said that Cox was in a jury trial “for possibly the next two weeks and won’t be available to comment.”)

Keila Reyes, who was watching the hearing on Zoom because of COVID restrictions, witnessed her father’s accused murderer being set free and was unable to say anything because only attorneys had microphones on.

“I was a mess, I was bawling. I couldn’t believe it,” she said.

As an English-Spanish translator for government meetings, Reyes is accustomed to the workings of the government. While she and her family still have strong ties to Mexico, where they still have relations with friends and church congregations, Reyes considers herself a proud American.

“I was born and raised here in the United States. And I always held our political system in very high regard,” she said. “And never in my worst nightmares did I imagine that something so highly respected as our criminal justice system would let me and my family down when we needed them the most.”

When asked about the case recently by The Daily Beast, District Attorney Rosales was hesitant to say whether anything should have been done differently, but she did say that she didn’t like the judge’s decision to set the suspect free.

“We disagreed with the grounds for dismissal, and that case is currently being appealed by my office,” she said. “I won’t really be able to make any further comment on that other than we believed that the grounds for dismissal were erroneous and that’s why we are appealing that.”

Carmona, who has been an outspoken critic of Rosales, places the dismissal entirely at the feet of the district attorney.

“Either Ms. Rosales sanctioned the use of the death penalty to be used that way, which is horrible. Or we had a rogue prosecutor that was talking about the death penalty without running it through his boss, Ms. Rosales, which is even scarier,” he said. “What kind of leadership are we getting when you have a prosecutor who is handing out the death penalty without even consulting the elected district attorney?”

Rosales is also under fire after two attorneys working the prosecution of the racist mass shooting attack on a local Walmart in 2019 departed her office. A judge has admonished her for poor preparation in that case, as well, for speaking out of turn to the public.

Twenty-one months into her tenure as the District Attorney for El Paso, Rosales is now facing an increasingly vocal community shouting for her ouster.

“It’s a dumpster fire,” Carmona said about the state of the DA’s office.

Texas Rep. Joe Moody, himself a former assistant district attorney in El Paso who has hinted at running against Rosales in 2024, gave a blunt assessment of the DA’s performance under Rosales’ leadership.

“I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s embarrassing for the community and ultimately going to be dangerous for our community,” he said. “I think that the leadership in that office has proven to be grossly incompetent.”

The DA’s office, as Rosales noted, has appealed the judge’s decision to dismiss the murder case. But Gabaldon—who immediately after being cleared of the murder was extradited to New Mexico corrections for an unrelated robbery charge—may not be around even if charges were to be reinstated.

Carmona said that his client was probably in Mexico, and “difficult, almost impossible, to find.” Attempts to reach him and his immediate family for comment for this story were unsuccessful.

For Keila Reyes, who is nursing an elderly mother still fraught from the death of her former husband, and raising three young girls with her husband, the life she knew has been permanently altered. The state that was supposed to serve as the weapon of justice for her murdered father and her family, was clearly unprepared, she said.

“The defense shredded the DA with the law. And they were my advocates.”

She said the appeal on her father’s case has little weight for her.

“Honestly, for me, I have no hope whatsoever for our local government. It has been the biggest letdown of my life. And it is so sad that it has to be for something so close to my heart—my dad.”