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Thread: John Allen Rubio - Texas Death Row

  1. #11
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Judge denies Rubio attempt to recuse judge

    A visiting judge on Tuesday denied convicted killer John Allen Rubio’s motion to recuse the judge who presided over his second capital murder trial.

    Rubio’s defense lawyer argued 370th state District Judge Noe Gonzalez showed “general recalcitrance” and failed to rule on funding motions in a timely manner that resulted in Rubio’s writ of habeas being incomplete.

    Senior Judge J. Manuel Banales denied the motion because there was no evidence backing up the allegations, according to his ruling.

    Rubio was convicted in 2010 of murdering three children, including one of his own, and decapitating them. He was sentenced to death.

    His first trial was overturned.

    http://www.valleymorningstar.com/new...9bb30f31a.html
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  2. #12
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Brownsville building where 3 kids were killed is demolished

    A South Texas apartment building where three small children were found decapitated in 2003 has been demolished.

    The building was torn down Monday. Before the demolition, city officials spoke about the children. City Manager Charlie Cabler said the community has always told officials that they "don't want this building here anymore." The structure, built in 1925, was bought by the city in 2009.

    The biological father of one of the children, John Rubio, is on death row for the killings. His common-law wife, Angela Camacho, is serving a life prison sentence. Rubio had told police he believed there was an evil presence in the children.

    The children — who authorities said were smothered, stabbed and mutilated — were found stuffed inside trash bags near a bedroom door.

    http://baytownsun.com/texas_ap/artic...528d5c745.html
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  3. #13
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
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    Man Convicted of Killing His Children, Back in State Court

    EDINBURG – A Brownsville man on death row for killing his three children is back in state court in Edinburg.

    The case of John Allen Rubio is now before Judge Noe Gonzalez in the 370th State District Court in Hidalgo County. His attorneys are working to convince the judge to grant a new trial.

    His attorneys are trying to downgrade the death penalty sentence.

    Monday’s hearing is called an evidentiary hearing. Rubio’s attorneys are presenting evidence, including testimony from five expert witnesses.

    Rubio’s attorneys want to show that his trial attorneys back in 2010 didn’t use the appropriate defense, which resulted in him being sentenced to death.

    They said alcohol syndrome and its effects should’ve been used as part of the defense.

    Rubio was convicted of capital murder in 2010 in the deaths of his three children, Julissa, John and Mary Jane. His common law wife, Angela Camacho, is serving a life sentence for her conviction in the case.

    The city of Brownsville demolished the building on Tyler and 8th Street where the children were murdered, back in May. The plan is to build a park and possibly a memorial to honor Julissa, John and Mary Jane. The site will also serve as a community garden for families living in the area. Hanna High School ROTC students will help build the plant beds.

    http://www.krgv.com/story/32710170/m...in-state-court
    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

  4. #14
    Senior Member CnCP Legend FFM's Avatar
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    ARTICLE 11.071 APPLICATION FOR WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS DENIED WITH WRITTEN ORDER:

    http://search.txcourts.gov/SearchMed...9-a02bb0d52b29

    ARTICLE 11.071 APPLICATION FOR WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS DISMISSED WITH WRITTEN ORDER:

    http://search.txcourts.gov/SearchMed...4-d3af9fa5ee90

  5. #15
    Moderator Ryan's Avatar
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    Texas man on death row for decapitating 3 kids loses appeal

    HOUSTON (AP) — The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected an appeal Wednesday from a 37-year-old Rio Grande Valley man on death row for stabbing and beheading his common-law wife's three children 15 years ago.

    John Allen Rubio's appeals lawyer argued unsuccessfully that Rubio's attorneys at his 2010 trial in Cameron County were deficient, that the trial court failed to sufficiently pay for his appellate investigation of the case and that the Texas death penalty sentencing procedure was unconstitutional.

    The state's highest criminal court also refused a second supplemental appeal from Rubio as legally improper and declined to consider the merits of the arguments in that appeal.

    "I have to say overall I am not surprised by the court's actions." Rubio's attorney, David Schulman, said. "I'm very, very disappointed."

    He said he would ask the appeals court for a rehearing, saying he was "shocked" the judges refused the supplemental appeal that included arguments that prosecutors refused to discuss a plea bargain, that mitigating evidence that could have changed the outcome wasn't presented to jurors, and that the trial defense team was hampered by insufficient money from the trial court.

    If the request failed, Schulman said other attorneys were prepared to take Rubio's case into the federal courts.

    Rubio was convicted twice of the March 11, 2003, slayings of 3-year-old Julissa Quesada, 14-month-old John E. Rubio and 2-month-old Mary Jane Rubio in a squalid Brownsville apartment. The appeals court in 2007 overturned his first conviction, ruling that statements from the children's mother, Angela Camacho, were wrongly allowed as evidence during the first trial. Camacho pleaded guilty and is serving a life sentence for her role in the slayings.

    Records show Rubio's brother and his girlfriend stopped by the apartment, spotted the slain infant, ran outside screaming and flagged down a police officer. The officer testified that after he saw decapitated body of a child in a back bedroom, Rubio held his wrists out and said, "arrest me."

    At his second trial, Rubio pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, a defense rejected by a jury.

    Defense experts testified his childhood — filled with violence at home, "toxic" parents, drug use and prostitution — damaged him developmentally.

    Rubio told authorities the children were possessed. Defense experts diagnosed him as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, a determination disputed by prosecution experts.

    https://www.chron.com/news/texas/art...-12937416.php?

  6. #16
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
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    On June 6, 2018, Rubio filed a habeas petition in Federal District Court.

    https://dockets.justia.com/docket/te...v00088/1518793
    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. #17
    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    Filing talks of Rubio's finances

    BY MARK REAGAN
    The Monitor

    A federal judge declared Thursday that convicted murderer John Allen Rubio, 37, is indigent, paving the way for two death penalty attorneys to represent the man during his federal habeas appeal.

    Rubio has twice been convicted of murder and sentenced to death: once in 2003 and again in 2010 after an appeals court reversed the original conviction and sentence. The 2010 outcome was the same: a conviction and the death penalty.

    The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied Rubio’s final state appeal May 23.

    On March 11, 2003, Rubio stabbed and decapitated 3-year-old Julissa Quesada, 14-month-old John E. Rubio and 2-month-old Mary June Rubio in the run-down apartment he shared with his common-law wife, Angela Camacho, 38, on the corner of 8th and Tyler streets.

    Camacho is serving a life sentence for her role in the brutal slayings.

    https://www.themonitor.com/news/loca...5ffd0528c.html
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  8. #18
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Federal defender files claims on behalf of Rubio

    By Laura B. Martinez
    Brownsville Herald

    An attorney representing convicted child killer John Allen Rubio wants the conviction tossed, claiming Rubio’s appointed defense did not represent him properly and that his case was handled by a district attorney that was steeped in scandal and misconduct.

    Jeremy Schepers, supervisor of the Capital Habeas Unit and federal public defender, filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus this month in the U.S. federal court in the Southern District of Texas, “declaring unconstitutional and invalid his (Rubio’s) conviction for capital murder as well as the resulting death sentence.”

    A jury in 2010 found Rubio guilty in the beheading of Julissa Quesada, 3; John E. Rubio, 14 months; and Mary Jane Rubio, 2 months. The three children were those of his common-law wife Angela Camacho.

    The children were smothered, stabbed and mutilated, according to Brownsville police investigators. Their decapitated bodies were stuffed inside trash bags and found near a bedroom door.

    According to a confession Rubio made to police, he admitted to killing the children in 2003 because he believed there was an evil presence in them. He even asked one of the officers who first arrived at the crime scene to place him under arrest, according to the officer’s statement.

    Rubio, 39, a Brownsville native, remains on death row at the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas.

    Camacho, 39, pleaded guilty to murder in 2005 and was sentenced to life prison and remains in custody at the Christina Melton Crain Unit in Gatesville. She is eligible for parole March 3, 2043.

    Scheper list nine claims for relief in why Rubio’s conviction should be tossed out and he be given a new trial. According to the writ, the nine claims are the following:

    1: Rubio’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel was violated because the defense failed to include a mental health expert as a member of the defense team;

    2: Rubio’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel was violated because the defense failed to investigate and present evidence about the existence and effects of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder and Temporal Lobe Epilepsy;

    3: Rubio’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel was violated because the defense failed to investigate and prepare for his guilt/innocence phase defense;

    4: The State violated Rubio’s right to due process under the Fourteenth Amendment by engaging in a flagrant and ongoing pattern of misconduct;

    5: The State violated Rubio’s right to equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment when it pursued the death penalty against him because of his indigent status and on the basis of a survey;

    6: The State violated Napue v Illinois when it elicited testimony that it knew, or should have known, to be false and misleading;

    7: Rubio’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel was violated because the defense failed to investigate and present evidence related to Rubio’s mental health during his prior incarceration;

    8: The State violated Rubio’s due process rights by eliciting false testimony from A.P. Merillat;

    9: The State violated Brady v Maryland by failing to disclose Merillat’s false testimony in Velez.

    Mental Health

    According to the writ, Rubio’s attorney’s failed to include the appropriate mental health expert on his defense team. Rubio was being represented by attorneys Ed Stapleton and Nat C. Perez Jr.

    “Trial counsel’s failure to assemble the minimum required defense team prejudiced Rubio at the competency trial, and at both the guilt/innocence and punishment phases of the trial on the merits,” the writ alleges.

    Had Rubio’s defense team retained a consulting mental health expert, “they would have recognized the need to present testifying experts regarding, among other things, Rubio’s exposure to extreme trauma beginning in utero and continuing into adulthood,” the writ states.

    According to that document, Rubio suffered from neuropsychological deficits, significant brain damage and various psychiatric conditions. “All such testimony would have been highly relevant to Rubio’s competency at the time of trial, his sanity at the time of the offense, and punishment,” the writ further states.

    During Rubio’s February 2010 competency trial, his mother, Hilda Barrientes, testified that she drank a six pack of beer on a daily basis while she was pregnant with her son. She also admitted to at one time doing cocaine, but couldn’t recall if she did the drug while pregnant with Rubio.

    Barrientes testified that Rubio would make comments to her that “God would tell him he was chosen one.” She testified that she did not try to get any help for him “because I didn’t think he had a problem.”
    Ineffective Counsel

    The writ claims that defense attorney Stapleton was in over his head. This was his first death penalty case. Instead of hiring a qualified mental health expert, Stapleton decided that he would be the team’s mental health “expert,” the writ says.

    “He failed to recognize the need to pursue red flags that Rubio suffers from Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD), Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (TLE), brain damage, severe trauma, and other psychiatric issues,” the writ stated.

    According to the writ, Stapleton’s failures prejudiced Rubio’s competency trial, as well as the guilt/innocence and punishment phase of the trial.

    The writ also states that during a state habeas hearing both Stapleton and Perez acknowledged that they “provided ineffective assistance to Rubio.”

    At an Aug. 8, 2010 state post-conviction hearing, Stapleton and Perez both said they provided ineffective assistance to Rubio, the writ claims. “Stapleton testified that he was ineffective under oath, and Perez yelled, from the jury box: We provided ineffective assistance of counsel,” the writ states.

    The jury deliberated for three hours and found Rubio guilty on three counts of capital murder.

    State Misconduct

    Armando R. Villalobos was the sitting Cameron County district attorney at the time of Rubio’s capital murder trial.

    It’s alleged in the writ that Villalobos didn’t give Rubio’s defense attorneys favorable pleas or dismissals because there were no hefty payoffs to be given to Villalobos. “While Villalobos was abusing his position for personal enrichment, and that of his office, he was also personally prosecuting Rubio, an indigent defendant who could not afford to buy Villalobo’s favor,” the writ stated.

    The writ states that the Cameron County District Attorney’s Office – under Villalobos’ reign – engaged in a broad pattern of misconduct and abusive prosecutorial tactics both before and during Rubio’s trial. “This misconduct pervaded the CCDA’s actions in Rubio’s case, rendering Rubio’s trial fundamentally unfair in violation of his constitutional right to due process,” the document stated.

    The filings read that Villalobos farmed out civil asset forfeiture cases to his friends in exchange for kickbacks, he bribed judges and used “ill gotten” money to fund Rubio’s prosecution. “His actions contributed to an atmosphere in which Rubio could not receive a fair trial,” the writ alleges.

    In addition, Villalobos blacklisted Rubio’s attorneys and his staff was told not to receive probation or plea bargain agreements for their cases, the document further alleged.

    “The intent was clear – make these attorneys undesirable to the clients,” the writ stated.

    Villalobos responded in a May 2010 writ that the DA’s office is not obligated to negotiate plea bargains.

    According to the Schepers writ, Rubio’s attorneys wanted to work with the DA’s office on a plea agreement in the capital murder case.

    The Schepers writ also claims the DA’s office lied when stating how much it paid a star expert at the trial. The writ states The Forensic Panel was paid over $400,000 for their involvement in the case, though the state represented to the Court that the expert “was not paid that much.”

    At a pretrial hearing, “Rubio’s lawyers complained about the gross injustice of the State paying one of its experts hundreds of thousands of dollars, while the defense was being starved of resources,” the write stated.

    Other claims against Villalobos were that the prosecution violated the trial court’s gag order to drum up publicity for Rubio’s trial and that Villalobos decided to seek the death penalty based on the results of a survey the district attorney’s conducted in the community.

    Villalobos was tried and convicted in May 2013 on one count of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, one count of conspiracy to violate the RICO Act, and five counts of extortion.

    The conspiracy also involved a former judge, a former state representative, lawyers and other defendants who were caught up in a scheme in which money was exchanged for favorable outcomes in criminal and civil cases. He was sentenced to 13 years in federal prison and remains incarcerated at the Forrest City Correctional Institution in Arkansas. He is scheduled to be released on Sept. 4, 2025.

    Rubio’s defense team is requesting the following from the federal court:

    >>Issue a writ of habeas corpus to have him brought before it, to the end that he may be discharged from his unconstitutional confinement and restraint and be relieved of his unconstitutional sentence of death;

    >>Allow petitioner leave to conduct discovery to more fully develop the factual bases demonstrating the constitutional infirmities in his conviction and sentence;

    >>Conduct an evidentiary hearing;

    >>That the court grant such other relief as law and justice require.

    https://www.brownsvilleherald.com/ne...fa857e82d.html
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  9. #19
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Armando R. Villalobos was the sitting Cameron County district attorney at the time of Rubio’s capital murder trial.

    It’s alleged in the writ that Villalobos didn’t give Rubio’s defense attorneys favorable pleas or dismissals because there were no hefty payoffs to be given to Villalobos. “While Villalobos was abusing his position for personal enrichment, and that of his office, he was also personally prosecuting Rubio, an indigent defendant who could not afford to buy Villalobo’s favor,” the writ stated.
    Are they complaining that the corrupt DA, corruptly didn't even ask for a bribe from them? This ain't a winner chief.
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  10. #20
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    The federal court needs to hurry up with this guy. Decapitating three children, his own no less, is just the worst thing imaginable

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