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Thread: Ronald Jeffrey Prible, Jr. - Texas Death Row

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    Ronald Jeffrey Prible, Jr. - Texas Death Row


    Ronald Prible


    Photo update of Ronald Prible


    Summary of Offense:

    On April 24, 1999, in Houston, Prible shot and killed a 34-year-old man and a 23-year-old woman. Prible then started a fire in the residence, causing the death of three children from smoke inhalation.

    Victims: Steve Herrera, Nilda Tirado, Valerie Herrera, Rachel Elizabeth Cumpian and Jade Herrera

    Prible was sentenced to death in Harris County in November 2002.

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    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    On June 18, 2009, Prible filed a habeas petition in Federal District Court.

    http://dockets.justia.com/docket/tex...v01896/676102/

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    EX PARTE RONALD JEFFREY PRIBLE, JR.

    Today the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed Prible's application for writ of habeas corpus.

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    Defense attorney accuses prosecution of withholding information involving snitches

    By Brian Rogers
    The Houston Chronicle

    More than a decade ago, Ronald Jeffrey Prible was sent to death row, partially because of evidence from a prison informant called to the witness stand by then Harris County prosecutor Kelly Siegler.

    The informant, an inmate at a Beaumont prison, told jurors that Prible confessed to killing an entire family after a night of drinking and drugs. The jurors knew the testimony was from a snitch and that they could choose to discount it when deciding guilt or innocence, as well as punishment.

    What jurors didn't know, Prible's appellate attorneys say, was how Siegler secured that information from the informant, details they said are required by law to be shared. Siegler withheld those details from Prible's trial lawyers, his appellate attorneys said.

    "The due process violations are astonishing," attorney James Rytting wrote in recent court filings.

    Those accusations are the latest against the former prosecutor, who already faces scrutiny for her tactics in another Harris County trial, a murder conviction that could be retried based on allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.

    In their latest federal filings, Rytting and attorney Philip Hilder cited that murder case and a judge's castigation of Siegler. In June, state District Judge Larry Gist found that she had committed 36 instances of misconduct in the 2007 murder trial of David Temple and ruled that the Katy man, who was sentenced to life in prison in his wife's 1999 slaying, deserves a new trial. The case is now before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

    Siegler issued a statement denying any wrongdoing in either case.

    "The suggestion of professional impropriety or unlawful conduct on my part inherent in the question is false and defamatory," she wrote. "The case was tried in 2002, and these assertions and questions are the exact same questions and issues that the trial jury and trial judge addressed then."

    She said, "That jury, who heard all of the witnesses and the evidence in a court of law, convicted Prible and sentenced him to death."

    The evidence

    Prible's lawyers maintain that prosecutors, especially Siegler, trained a group of informants at the Beaumont medium security prison to work against Prible before he arrived there in the fall of 2000.

    The inmates were told Prible was a bank robber who killed a family and was going to walk because of a lack of evidence, according to Prible's lawyers. With choice bits of information, known only to the killer and law enforcement, the inmates could manufacture a confession to get time shaved off their sentences.

    Trading time off for cooperation is not unusual for prosecutors, and the deal is legitimate as long as jurors can see the extent of the agreement, when they have to weigh credibility, experts note.

    "There's an obligation to disclose any agreements or promises that the government made with the witnesses," said Geoffrey Corn, a professor at the South Texas College of Law. He said that would likely include disclosing negotiations and whether they had worked with the government in the past.

    In 1999, little evidence connected Prible to the murders of five family members.

    On April 24 of that year, Prible's longtime friend, Steve Herrera, was found on the floor of his northwest Houston home, shot once in the base of his skull. Herrera's fiancee, Nilda Tirado, was found on the loveseat in the den wearing only a T-shirt. She also had been killed by a single gunshot wound to the head. Her body had been covered in gasoline and burned. Black soot spread through the house, fatally choking the couple's three young daughters as they slept. Investigators believed that Tirado had been sexually assaulted and her body burned to cover the evidence.

    Authorities learned that Prible, a former Marine living at his parents' home, was the last known person to see the family alive.

    When police arrived at his house about eight hours after the bodies were discovered, Prible was playing with his young son.

    He did not smell like smoke. His clothes and shoes from the night before were tested for trace evidence, but no blood, hair or accelerants were found. Tests on the clothes he was wearing when he was detained also came back negative.

    Prible answered questions, agreed to be photographed in the nude to show he did not have marks or burns and gave DNA samples.

    The snitches


    Prible told police he had been hanging out with Herrera the night before. They spent the early evening drinking, using cocaine and playing pool in Herrera's garage. They went to a topless bar, then Prible accompanied Herrera back to his home. Prible said he and Tirado had sex in a bathroom unbeknownst to Herrera, who was in the garage.

    He was a suspect, but not enough evidence existed to charge him with the killings.

    But during the investigation, Prible confessed to robbing six banks and landed in federal prison. Some of that bank money was at Herrera's house, and the two were planning to buy $84,000 worth of stolen cocaine, he said.

    In April 2001, on the two-year anniversary of the slayings, cold case investigators retold the crime. In a newspaper article, the families of the victims said they suspected a convicted bank robber was the culprit. Prible's name did not appear in the story.

    According to Prible, Siegler visited him in prison shortly after the article ran and pressed him for information.

    Six weeks later, he was charged with capital murder.

    Prible was then moved from the low security unit at Beaumont to a medium security unit.

    Before Prible was relocated, his attorneys said, Siegler gave snitches enough information to fabricate a confession.

    One jailhouse informant was Nathan Ray Foreman, who had been a prosecution witness in a Harris County drug case in 1994.

    Foreman became cellmates with another snitch, Michael Beckcom.

    Now a free man who lives in another state, Beckcom maintains that Prible confessed to the crime, first in fits and starts and finally in astounding detail after an emotional Thanksgiving in 2001.

    But he acknowledged that other inmates were actively working to get a story.

    "Foreman always gave me the feeling that (Siegler) was giving him something. Like he was really in the pocket," Beckcom said recently.

    Foreman, who is out of jail and lives in Houston, did not respond to numerous calls and requests for comment left with his attorney and with a family member at his court-listed address.

    Thanksgiving confession

    Prible's lawyers say Foreman and Beckcom worked to recruit other inmates to bolster their story and credibility.

    Carl Walker was among them. In an interview with Prible's appellate lawyer, Walker said Foreman and Beckcom knew details that only the killer and law enforcement could know, like the position of the bodies.

    And they knew it before they ever met Prible, Walker said. In recorded transcripts with Prible's attorney while in prison, Walker detailed the plot.

    According to Walker, several inmates who were privy to the details tried to get Prible to talk. Foreman and Beckcom got him drunk on alcohol and high on marijuana, all prison contraband, to befriend him.

    During a Thanksgiving visit from their families, Foreman and Beckcom set up a prison photo - a perk for well-behaved inmates. They included Prible in the merriment, taking a photo with all three men standing behind their mothers.

    Beckcom said it was later that day that Prible sat down with him and Foreman and poured out his heart about the killings.

    The photo would take center stage at Prible's trial, bolstering the credibility of Beckcom.

    Under cross-examination, Beckcom admitted that the photo was staged to corroborate the confession, court records show.

    Walker also said he was quietly recruited for weeks to write a letter to Siegler about the case. A converted Buddhist, Walker said he later pulled out of the plot because he did not want to shoulder the karma of lying about a confession in a death penalty case.

    "Prible was dead the day he hit the yard. He just didn't know," Walker said.

    Withheld information

    Walker's letter, which he now says was not true, is one of three Prible's appellate attorneys found in Siegler's files, in a sealed folder marked "Attorney-Client Privileged."

    In Walker's letter, he said that he, Beckcom and Foreman, along with three other inmates were "all close friends of Pribble," whose name was misspelled.

    "I was present on many occasions when Jeff was telling his side of the story," the letter states. "At first Jeff would only talk about the bank jobs he had pulled, but later he began to open up about the murders and how he did what he thought he had to do. It was business, not personal."

    The two other letters corroborating the story included the same misspelling of Prible's name.

    To Prible's appellate lawyers, the letters show that the snitches were working together, a fact that his trial attorneys did not know. Prosecutors are required to turn over information that could help a suspect under a law named after the U.S. Supreme Court case Brady vs. Maryland. Prible's lawyers argue that the letters, which were released years after the trial, are Brady material because they could have been used to impeach Beckcom after he testified against Prible.

    "Hiding the State's use of informants, and Beckcom's and Foreman's involvement in the ring, was vital to the State's ability to secure a conviction against Prible," Prible's attorney wrote in his most recent motion for a new trial. "Without Prible's alleged 'confession' to Beckcom, the case against Prible was insufficient to even take to the grand jury."

    Speaking through a glass pane at death row, Prible said he did not know who killed Herrera and his family, but it was not him.

    "I think it's obvious that someone in the circle of Steve's friends knew about the money in the house and robbed him," Prible said. "I didn't."

    are astonishing," attorney James Rytting wrote in recent court filings.

    Those accusations are the latest against the former prosecutor, who already faces scrutiny for her tactics in another Harris County trial, a murder conviction that could be retried based on allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.

    In their latest federal filings, Rytting and attorney Philip Hilder cited that murder case and a judge's castigation of Siegler. In June, state District Judge Larry Gist found that she had committed 36 instances of misconduct in the 2007 murder trial of David Temple and ruled that the Katy man, who was sentenced to life in prison in his wife's 1999 slaying, deserves a new trial. The case is now before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

    Siegler issued a statement denying any wrongdoing in either case.

    "The suggestion of professional impropriety or unlawful conduct on my part inherent in the question is false and defamatory," she wrote. "The case was tried in 2002, and these assertions and questions are the exact same questions and issues that the trial jury and trial judge addressed then."

    She said, "that jury, who heard all of the witnesses and the evidence in a court of law, convicted Prible and sentenced him to death."

    Prible's lawyers maintain that prosecutors, especially Siegler, trained a group of informants at the Beaumont medium security prison to work against Prible before he arrived there in the fall of 2000.

    The inmates were told Prible was a bank robber who killed a family and was going to walk because of a lack of evidence, according to Prible's lawyers. With choice bits of information, known only to the killer and law enforcement, the inmates could manufacture a confession to get time shaved off their sentences.

    Trading time off for cooperation is not unusual for prosecutors, and the deal is legitimate as long as jurors can see the extent of the agreement, when they have to weigh credibility, experts note.

    "There's an obligation to disclose any agreements or promises that the government made with the witnesses," said Geoffrey Corn, a professor at the South Texas College of Law. He said that would likely include disclosing negotiations and whether they had worked with the government in the past.

    In 1999, little evidence connected Prible to the murders of five family members.

    On April 24 of that year, Prible's longtime friend Steve Herrera was found on the floor of his northwest Houston home, shot once in the base of his skull. Herrera's fiancee, Nilda Tirado, was found on the loveseat in the den wearing only a T-shirt. She also had been killed by a single gunshot wound to the head. Her body had been covered in gasoline and burned. Black soot spread through the house, fatally choking the couple's three young daughters as they slept. Investigators believed that Tirado had been sexually assaulted and her body burned to cover the evidence.

    Authorities learned that Prible, a former Marine living at his parents' home, was the last known person to see the family alive.

    When police arrived at his house about eight hours after the bodies were discovered, Prible was playing with his young son.

    He did not smell like smoke. His clothes and shoes from the night before were tested for trace evidence, but no blood, hair or accelerants were found. Tests on the clothes he was wearing when he was detained also came back negative.

    Prible answered questions, agreed to be photographed in the nude to show he did not have marks or burns and gave DNA samples.

    Prible told police he had been hanging out with Herrera the night before. They spent the early evening drinking, using cocaine and playing pool in Herrera's garage. They went to a topless bar, then Prible accompanied Herrera back to his home. Prible said he and Tirado had sex in a bathroom unbeknownst to Herrera, who was in the garage.

    He was a suspect, but not enough evidence existed to charge him with the killings.

    But during the investigation, Prible confessed to robbing six banks and landed in federal prison. Some of that bank money was at Herrera's house and the two were planning to buy $84,000 worth of stolen cocaine, he said.

    In April 2001, on the two-year anniversary of the slayings, cold case investigators retold the crime. In a newspaper article, the families of the victims said they suspected a convicted bank robber was the culprit. Prible's name did not appear in the story.

    According to Prible, Siegler visited him in prison shortly after the article ran and pressed him for information.

    Six weeks later, he was charged with capital murder.

    Prible was then moved from the low security unit at Beaumont to a medium security unit.

    Before Prible was relocated, his attorneys said, Siegler gave snitches enough information to fabricate a confession.

    One jailhouse informant was Nathan Ray Foreman, who had been a prosecution witness in a Harris County drug case in 1994.

    Foreman became cellmates with another snitch, Michael Beckcom.

    Now a free man who lives in another state, Beckcom maintains that Prible confessed to the crime, first in fits and starts and finally in astounding detail after an emotional Thanksgiving in 2001.

    But he acknowledged that other inmates were actively working to get a story.

    "Foreman always gave me the feeling that (Siegler) was giving him something. Like he was really in the pocket," Beckcom said recently.

    Foreman, who is out of jail and lives in Houston, did not respond to numerous calls and requests for comment left with his attorney and with a family member at his court-listed address.

    Prible's lawyers say Foreman and Beckcom worked to recruit other inmates to bolster their story and credibility.

    Carl Walker was among them. In an interview with Prible's appellate lawyer, Walker said Foreman and Beckcom knew details that only the killer and law enforcement could know, like the position of the bodies.

    And they knew it before they ever met Prible, Walker said. In recorded transcripts with Prible's attorney while in prison, Walker detailed the plot.

    According to Walker, several inmates who were privy to the details tried to get Prible to talk. Foreman and Beckcom got him drunk on alcohol and high on marijuana, all prison contraband, in an attempt to befriend him.

    During a Thanksgiving visit from their families, Foreman and Beckcom set up a prison photo - a perk for well-behaved inmates. They included Prible in the merriment, taking a photo with all three men standing behind their mothers.

    Beckcom said it was later that day that Prible sat down with him and Foreman and poured out his heart about the killings.

    The photo would take center stage at Prible's trial, bolstering the credibility of Beckcom.

    Under cross-examination, Beckcom admitted that the photo was staged to corroborate the confession, court records show.

    Walker also said he was quietly recruited for weeks to write a letter to Siegler about the case. A converted Buddhist, Walker said he later pulled out of the plot because he did not want to shoulder the karma of lying about a confession in a death penalty case.

    "Prible was dead the day he hit the yard. He just didn't know," Walker said.

    Walker's letter, which he now says was not true, is one of three Prible's appellate attorneys found in Siegler's files years after the trial, in a sealed manila folder marked "Attorney-Client Privileged."

    In Walker's letter, he said that he, Beckcom and Foreman, along with three other inmates were "all close friends of Pribble," whose name was misspelled.

    "I was present on many occasions when Jeff was telling his side of the story," the letter states. "At first Jeff would only talk about the bank jobs he had pulled, but later he began to open up about the murders and how he did what he thought he had to do. It was business, not personal."

    The two other letters corroborating the story included the same misspelling of Prible's name.

    To Prible's appellate lawyers, the letters show that the ring of snitches were working together, a fact that his trial attorneys did not know. Prosecutors are required to turn over information that could help a suspect under a law named after the U.S. Supreme Court case Brady vs. Maryland. Prible's lawyers argue that the letters, which were released years after the trial, are Brady material because they could have been used to impeach Beckcom after he testified against Prible.

    "Hiding the State's use of informants, and Beckcom's and Foreman's involvement in the ring, was vital to the State's ability to secure a conviction against Prible," Prible's attorney wrote in his most recent motion for a new trial. "Without Prible's alleged 'confession' to Beckcom, the case against Prible was insufficient to even take to the grand jury."

    Speaking through a glass pane at death row, Prible said he did not know who killed Herrera and his family, but it was not him.

    "I think it's obvious that someone in the circle of Steve's friends knew about the money in the house and robbed him," Prible said. "I didn't."

    http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news...of-6576007.php

  5. #5
    Member Member Dirtnapper's Avatar
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    I think prosecuting attorneys who do that kind of nonsense should be disbarred and prosecuted themselves....especially for a capital murder charge.

  6. #6
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
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    Habeas relief was GRANTED in Federal District Court today.

    https://twitter.com/RDunhamDPIC/stat...456274434?s=19
    Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products.

    "They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma, these people. The root cause of this is there's no discipline in the homes, they don't go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it's disgusting." - Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters

  7. #7
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JLR's Avatar
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    He was granted habeas relief on 6 separate claims. I've never heard of anything like that before.

  8. #8
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    I see the federal district court has made yet another mistake
    Thank you for the adventure - Axol

    Tried so hard and got so far, but in the end it doesn’t even matter - Linkin Park

    Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever. - Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt

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  9. #9
    Moderator Ryan's Avatar
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    Federal judge orders new trial for death row inmate in Houston capital murder case

    A federal judge on Wednesday agreed to temporarily set aside a Texas death row inmate’s capital murder conviction and ordered the state to either give him a new trial or release him from custody.

    Ronald Prible, 48, was sentenced to death in 2002 on a capital murder charge in connection with the slayings of five family members in 1999 at a northwest Houston home. His sentence partially stemmed from the testimony of a prison informant who said Prible confessed to the killing.

    Prible’s attorneys have maintained that prosecutors, including former Harris County prosecutor Kelly Siegler, trained a group of informants to set him up.

    Siegler no longer works for the office and currently serves as host of the crime TV show “Cold Justice.”

    In an 88-page court order, U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison said Prible should be released if the state does not begin new criminal proceedings within 180 days. Harris County District Attorney’s Office spokesman Dane Schiller said this ruling was only a first step in the ongoing federal proceedings.

    “The Texas Attorney General may decide to appeal this to the 5th Circuit,” he said. “We are closely monitoring the case.”

    Prible’s appellate attorneys have been challenging the conviction for more than a decade. Judge Ellison agreed with their claims that the state suppressed and withheld evidence in the original prosecution.

    “I’ve had this case for 12 years, and the takeaway is that we have a client who has been on death row for 12 years, placed there on informant testimony of the sort that should not be used to put anybody on death row or in prison,” said Prible’s appellate attorney James Rytting. “It’s a serious problem within the federal and state system, and we were fortunate that other inmates in the case came forward and said he was set up.”

    On April 24, 1999, Prible's longtime friend, Steve Herrera, was found on the floor of his northwest Houston home, shot once in the base of his skull. Herrera's fiancee, Nilda Tirado, was found on the loveseat in the den wearing only a T-shirt, also killed by a single gunshot wound to the head. Her body had been covered in gasoline and burned. Black soot spread through the house, fatally choking the couple's three young daughters as they slept. Investigators believed that Tirado had been sexually assaulted and her body burned to cover the evidence.

    According to earlier reports in the Houston Chronicle, authorities learned that Prible was the last known person to see the family alive. Police, however, found little evidence when they questioned him. He did not smell like smoke. His clothes and shoes from the night before were tested for trace evidence, but no blood, hair or accelerants were found. Tests on the clothes he was wearing when he was detained also came back negative.

    Further investigation did not reveal enough evidence to charge him with the crime. Prible did, however, confess to a string of bank robberies, which landed him in federal prison. He said some of the bank money was kept at Herrera’s house, and Prible has maintained that someone else who knew about the money likely robbed the family.

    In 2001, after the capital murder case went cold, Siegler questioned Prible in prison and later charged him in the slayings. In court filings, Prible’s attorneys say Siegler supplied prison informants with enough information to fabricate a confession.

    While challenging the conviction, Rytting and attorney Philip Hilder pointed to other allegations of misconduct against Siegler. For example, a state district judge in 2015 found that she had committed 36 instances of misconduct in the 2007 murder trial of David Temple, who has since been given a new trial after a conviction in his wife's 1999 slaying. Temple was found guilty again in the second trial.

    Siegler has denied any wrongdoing in that case. In the Prible case, attorneys say she withheld letters that proved the snitches were setting up their client.

    https://www.houstonchronicle.com/new...s-15284710.php
    "How do you get drunk on death row?" - Werner Herzog

    "When we get fruit, we get the juice and water. I ferment for a week! It tastes like chalk, it's nasty" - Blaine Keith Milam #999558 Texas Death Row

  10. #10
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    Today’s justice system everyone. The attorney makes up a pathetic laughable claim and an idiot judge falls for it
    Thank you for the adventure - Axol

    Tried so hard and got so far, but in the end it doesn’t even matter - Linkin Park

    Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever. - Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt

    I’m going to the ghost McDonalds - Garcello

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