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Texas Department of Criminal Justice - Executed Offenders (Jessy Carlos San Miguel)

Texas Department of Criminal Justice

Texas Attorney General

MEDIA ADVISORY:

JESSY CARLOS SAN MIGUEL SCHEDULED TO BE EXECUTED

AUSTIN - Texas Attorney General John Cornyn offers the following information on Jessy Carlos San Miguel who is scheduled to be executed after 6 p.m., Thursday, June 29th. In January of 1991, Jessy Carlos San Miguel was convicted for the capital murder of Michael Phelan. San Miguel shot Phelan and three other people while robbing a Taco Bell in Irving. Michael Phelan was shot twice, once in the back of the head. The second victim, Son Nguyen was shot in the shoulder. The bullet entered his neck and exited near his nose. A third victim, Frank Fraga was shot twice in the back of the head. The final victim, Theresa Fraga, who was pregnant, was also shot twice in the back of the head. The victims' bodies were found in a walk in refrigerator at the Taco Bell. In June 1991, a jury sentenced San Miguel to death.

EVIDENCE

When police arrested San Miguel during a traffic stop early on the morning of Jan. 26, 1991, they found bundles of money stuffed in a paper Taco Bell bag. Police also found two ski masks, two pairs of gloves, and a nine millimeter automatic pistol which was empty, except for one bullet. The gun smelled like it had been fired recently. The bullets found in the victim's bodies matched the gun found in San Miguel's car. San Miguel's shoes and shirt had human blood on them. After his arrest, San Miguel gave a statement to police, admitting that he robbed the Taco Bell and that he had personally killed the four victims. Two days after giving that statement, San Miguel gave another, similar confession to police.

COURT APPEALS TIMELINE

Automatic appeal to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which affirmed on May 26, 1993.

United States Supreme Court denied certiorari review on March 21, 1994.

Oct. 7, 1996 - San Miguel filed an application for state habeas corpus relief and an amended application on June 20, 1997. The trial court entered findings of fact and conclusions of law recommending that habeas relief be denied. Adopting some findings and rejecting others, the Court of Criminal Appeals denied habeas relief based on the remaining findings and the Court's own review on Nov. 5, 1997.

May 26, 1998 - San Miguel filed a petition for habeas relief in federal district.

May 11, 1999 - District Court entered a final judgement denying relief.

Feb. 2, 2000 - San Miguel's request for permission to appeal was denied by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

PRIOR CRIMINAL HISTORY

During the punishment phase, a student who went to school with San Miguel testified that he was on crutches when San Miguel threatened him with a knife and then later knocked him out with a punch (breaking some teeth). San Miguel thought the student had slighted San Miguel's girlfriend. Another student testified about one night when he went to a location where San Miguel and another student were supposed to have a fight. When the other student did not show up, the testifying student attempted to start a fight with San Miguel, who then pulled out a pistol and shot him in the stomach. A third student, Mitchell McDearman, was another friend of San Miguel's in school and testified to seeing San Miguel in 18 fights, mostly started by San Miguel. He was also a witness when San Miguel shot the student in the stomach.

A fourth student testified that he was at a party sitting next to San Miguel's wife and another girl when San Miguel grabbed him, shook him, asked what he was doing messing around with his wife, and threatened to kill him. When the student got home, he found nine or 10 bullet holes in the wall of his bedroom. A neighbor testified that he saw a truck similar to San Miguel's drive by at the time of the shooting. An investigating officer located San Miguel's truck and observed inside a spent .22 long rifle shell of the same variety as spent shells found near the student's house. While talking to San Miguel and his wife in their apartment, the officer observed a holster for a .22 long rifle pistol, an empty magazine for an M-16 or AR-15 assault rifle, and ammunition for three or four different types of weapons, including the type of ammunition used in the shooting of the house. A fifth student, Adam Alvarez, was a friend of San Miguel's in school and testified that he went with San Miguel during the shooting of the house and that San Miguel and another student fired shots into the house with an automatic rifle and a pistol. He also talked about personally seeing San Miguel in nine fights in high school. He testified that San Miguel started a lot of the fights, that he enjoyed his reputation, and that no one picked on him. San Miguel also admitted to him to breaking into houses, mostly to steal weapons. Finally, San Miguel told him that, "if he ever got caught, he wanted to go down for something everybody knew about or something big." An Irving police officer testified that he arrested San Miguel for unlawfully carrying a weapon in 1989, when San Miguel was stopped for speeding and had a revolver with an eight-inch barrel under his seat.

Another officer testified that in 1989 San Miguel signed a statement confessing to stealing a BMW, using it for a night, and then leaving it near his apartment. Because San Miguel got the keys to the car from a member of the complainant's household, the charges were reduced to a misdemeanor and San Miguel received one-year probation. An officer who arrested San Miguel for burglary of a house, testified that he found a stolen shotgun and two pistols in San Miguel's room upon his arrest. Several witnesses testified that items found in San Miguel's apartment had been taken when their homes were burglarized. Another officer who pulled San Miguel over for failure to maintain a single lane testified that he arrested San Miguel on that occasion for possession of an illegally sawed off shotgun.

An Irving officer, who was once called out to a disturbance between two groups of males, arrested San Miguel for possessing illegal brass knuckles. San Miguel was standing with members of the Always Violent Boys gang. A security guard at a Mervyn's store where San Miguel worked testified that, after San Miguel was caught improperly using his employee discount to purchase items for third parties, San Miguel confessed to also stealing between $800 and $1,000 in merchandise. Though he signed a promissory note to repay the store, he never paid any amount. Two officers at the jail where San Miguel was held, testified to an occasion when San Miguel refused to leave the recreation room and return to his cell. When the officers entered the room to get San Miguel, he struck one officer in the mouth and continued to try to hit them as they carried him back to his cell. One officer noted another occasion when he was serving the inmates burritos and San Miguel made the statement: "The only reason why I killed those people is they couldn't make good Mexican food."

ProDeathPenalty.Com

Jessy San Miguel was sentenced to die for the January 26, 1991 murders of 28-year-old Michael John Phelan and three other people, one pregnant, during a robbery at a Taco Bell restaurant in Irving, Texas. San Miguel and his accomplice, Jerome Green, a part-time employee of the Taco Bell, forced Michael, the manager, and two employees into the walk-in freezer after taking the cash from the store safe. Theresa Fraga was 16 years old and several months pregnant. Her cousin Frank Fraga was also an employee at the store. Also murdered was Son Trang Nyugen, a friend of the Fragas. When the killers saw Son sitting in a car outside the restaurant, he was forced into the freezer with the other victims. All were shot at close range. The killers were arrested leaving the scene of the murders. Six members of the victims' families witnessed the execution but San Miguel never acknowledged their presence.

Texas Execution Information Center

Jessy Carlos San Miguel, 28, was executed by lethal injection on 29 June 2000, in Huntsville, Texas, for the murder of four people in a fast-food restaurant. In January 1991, Jessy San Miguel, then 19, and Jerome Green, 17, waited outside a Taco Bell restaurant that had been closed and locked for the night. When an employee opened the door to take out the trash, the pair went inside and forced the assistant manager, Michael John Phelan, 28, to wait for a time-lock safe to open. Then they herded Phelan, employee Theresa Fraga, 16, and Theresa's cousin, Frank Fraga, 23, into a walk-in freezer. Theresa Fraga was also pregnant at the time. The robbers noticed Son Trang Nyugen, 35, a friend of the Fragas who was waiting to take them home, sitting in a vehicle outside and also forced him into the freezer with the other victims. San Miguel and Green then left the restaurant with the money. A few minutes later, San Miguel decided to go back inside the restaurant and the freezer where his hostages were. Police who took his confession said he "asked them to give him a good reason why he shouldn't kill them", then shot them each in the head at close range with a 9 mm pistol. Phelan and Nyugen were shot once and the Fragas were each shot twice. San Miguel and Green were stopped about a half a mile from the scene, on suspicion of drunk driving. In their car, police found the gun, two Taco Bell sacks stuffed with $1,390, ski masks, and two pairs of gloves. They began looking for Taco Bell restaurants in the area and found the four victims in the freezer. The first officer on the scene fainted at the sight of the bodies. There was so much blood on the floor, police used a squeegee to find the spent cartridges. Green was a former part-time employee of that restaurant. San Miguel had applied for a job there but was not hired.

San Miguel had a violent past. He had been arrested nine times and had been accused of shooting a man. At the time of the murders, he was free on bonds totaling $45,000 on four charges of weapons violations and burglaries. A jail officer testified that San Miguel remarked before his conviction, "The only reason why I killed those people is they couldn't make good Mexican food."

Although San Miguel confessed to all four murders, he was only tried and convicted for killing Phelan. He and his attorney contended he was unfairly convicted because of racial stereotyping. Court records show that the prosecutor uttered a sentence that included various turns of the phrase "run for the border", a Taco Bell ad slogan. They also claim that San Miguel's defense attorney made numerous allegedly biased statements. Spokesmen for the state of Texas point out that none of the alleged race-based statements were made by state-introduced witnesses or expert witnesses, and claim that the state did nothing wrong during the trial.

"The evidence is so obvious that I had a very unfair trial," San Miguel said in a death row interview. "They did not base their decisions on my history, on my individuality. It was based on me being a Mexican." Of the murders, he said, "there is nothing I could do to stop what happened. People react in the heat of the moment . . . when something happens out of instinct, we just do it. We don't do it out of intent, we don't do it on purpose, it just happens." The Texas Board of Pardons and paroles rejected a clemency request from San Miguel, by a vote of 18 to 0. The Supreme Court rejected his final appeal, and Governor George W. Bush declined to grant a temporary stay.

At his execution, San Miguel urged his family and relatives to be strong and said he loved them. He did not acknowledge the presence of the six members of his victims' families. He was pronounced dead at 6:19 p.m. Jerome Green accepted a plea bargain and was sentenced to 50 years in prison. He will be eligible for parole in 2004.

Abeline ReporterNews.Com

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) - Convicted killer Jessy Carlos San Miguel, a 10th grade dropout with a history of mayhem, was executed Thursday evening for leaving four people dead after robbing a Dallas-area Taco Bell nine years ago. In a brief final statement, San Miguel urged friends and relatives watching him die to be strong and said he loved them. "It's going to be all right," he said. "Ironic, isn't it?" he noted while his arms were outstretched on the death chamber gurney. "I'm a cross. Y'all take care of each other. I'll be watching over you." Asked by the warden if that was all he had to say, San Miguel replied, "Yeah."

As the drugs began taking effect, he sputtered and gasped. He was pronounced dead at 6:19 p.m., eight minutes after the lethal doses began. Six members of his victims' families watched him die, but he never acknowledged their presence.

"It was very disappointing," Mary Gomez, whose daughter and nephew were killed at the restaurant, said after watching San Miguel die. "He at least could have said: 'I'm sorry.'" San Miguel's lethal injection, the fifth of the month in Texas and the 24th this year, attracted little of the attention of a week ago when hundreds of demonstrators and media descended on Huntsville for the execution of Gary Graham. Less than two dozen death penalty opponents showed up outside the prison. There was only one television crew.

Graham's claims that he was innocent and was tried unfairly put under intense national scrutiny the support of the death penalty by Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Unlike Graham, who was belligerent with officers throughout his final hours, San Miguel was reported docile as his punishment time approached and the U.S. Supreme Court was delivered 11th-hour appeals. He selected an extensive final meal that included pizza, 10 quesadillas, five strips of grilled beef, five strips of stir-fried beef, ice cream, double fudge chocolate cake, broccoli, grapes and tea.

The carnage after San Miguel and an accomplice left the suburban Irving Taco Bell before dawn Jan. 26, 1991 was so overwhelming, the police officer who discovered the four bodies in the walk-in freezer fainted. And there was so much blood on the floor, authorities had to use a squeegee to locate the spent cartridges from the murder weapon. "It was just a cold-blooded, methodical execution of four people," Toby Shook, an assistant district attorney in Dallas County who prosecuted the case, said. San Miguel and his attorneys contended he unfairly was convicted because of racial stereotyping, that prosecutors and his own court-appointed defense attorney cited Mexican-American culture in their arguments to the jury that sentenced him to death. "What troubles me is Gov. Bush continually tells the media and the newspapers that he has always been fair, that they have ways in the system to be ensured everybody has a fair trial, but all that is not true," San Miguel said in a death row interview Wednesday.

San Miguel was convicted and condemned for fatally shooting Michael Phelan, 28, the assistant manager at the restaurant. The other victims included restaurant employees Theresa Fraga, 16, of Irving, and her cousin, Frank Fraga, 23, of Dallas; and a friend of Ms. Fraga's, Son Truong Nguyen, 35, of Mesquite. Theresa Fraga was six months pregnant. Nguyen had been wounded while serving in the Vietnamese army, then fled the war-torn country for what he thought would be a life of safety in the United States. Phelan and Nguyen were shot once in the head. The Fraga cousins were shot twice in the head.

San Miguel and a companion, Jerome Mike Green, were pulled over by Irving police who suspected them of drunken driving. When the officers found a Taco Bell bag filled with $1,390, two ski masks, a 9 mm pistol and two pairs of gloves, they began checking the chain's restaurants in the area for a robbery. The slaughter was discovered a few blocks away. Green had worked part-time at the restaurant. San Miguel, records showed, had applied for a job there but was not hired. At the time, the 19-year-old San Miguel was free on bonds totaling $45,000 on four charges of weapons violations and burglaries. He confessed to police that he robbed the store and shot the victims. He did not testify at his trial. Green later pleaded guilty and received a 50-year prison term.

Evidence showed the pair planned the robbery for a few weeks and waited outside the locked place during the overnight hours until employees opened the door to take out the trash. Nguyen was waiting outside to pick up Theresa Fraga from work when he was herded into the cooler with the Fraga cousins while San Miguel waited with Phelan for a time-lock safe to open. According to Shook, San Miguel said in his confession he left the restaurant and the hostages in the cooler but went back inside "and asked them to give him a good reason why he shouldn't kill them." "Then he started shooting," the prosecutor said.

"It wasn't supposed to happen like this," San Miguel said from death row. "There is nothing I could do to stop what happened. People react in the heat of the moment, in the heat of deep emotions. When something happens out of instinct, we just do it. We don't do it out of intent. We don't do it on purpose. It just happens." According to court records, San Miguel told an officer while in jail: "The only reason why I killed those people is they couldn't make good Mexican food." San Miguel was well known to police. He had been arrested nine times and was accused at age 16 of shooting another person. He also was linked to at least two drive-by shootings and a number of burglaries. "He'd just kind of done it all," Shook said. "It wasn't gang related. Testimony showed he was kind of his own gang. He didn't need it. He did his own stuff."

Canadian Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty

In the wake of the recent United States Supreme Court action in the case of Victor Hugo Saldaño, Mr. San Miguel has filed a Petition in the District Court of Dallas County, Texas, asking the court to vacate his death sentence on the grounds that his death sentence was based in part of his Mexican heritage. In Texas a defendant cannot be sentenced to death unless the jury finds that he would be a danger in the future. At Mr. San Miguel's sentencing trial, his own lawyer blamed his violent and aggressive behavior as a teenager on his Mexican ethnicity. Also, the prosecutor appealed to the jury's prejudice and fear of illegal immigrants from Mexico.

On June 5, 2000, the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari and vacated the 1991 death sentence of Victor Hugo Saldaño, of Collins County, remanded his case to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, his death sentence because Dr. Walter Quijano, a clinical psychlogist testified for the state that the risk that person will commit acts of of violence is greater for black and hispanic prisoners. Dr. Quijano based his testimony that on evidence that blacks and Hispanics are over-represented in the criminal justice system. In pleadings filed with the United States Supreme Court, the State of Texas "confessed error, acknowledging that, "the infusion of race as a factor for the jury to weigh in making its determination violated [Saldaño's] constitutional right to be sentenced without regard to the color of his skin." On behalf of the State of Texas, the Attorney General said that "[b]ecause the use of race in Saldaño's sentencing seriously undermined the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of the judicial process, Texas confesses error and agrees that Saldaño is entitled to a new sentencing hearing." The Attorney General explained that importance of a racially unbiased judicial process is so great that the State will not hide behind procedural technicalities and that the death sentence should be reversed even though Saldaon’s lawyer did not object to the testimony and there was other evidence to support the death sentence.

In addition to Saldaño, the State has identified six other cases in Dr. Quijano gave similar testimony. The State has indicated that it will not oppose requests for similar relief in those cases should those litigants seek to supplement their pending applications for review. Without qualification, the Attorney General noted that "it is inappropriate to allow race to be considered as a factor in our criminal justice system." Although Dr. Quijano did not testify in Mr. San Miguel's trial, race was considered as a factor in determining "future dangerousness," so that Mr. San Miguel should be included in the group of cases being re-considered. Like the jury that sentenced Victor Saldaño to death, the San Miguel jury was impermissibly allowed and encouraged to consider race as a factor in sentencing San Miguel to death. During Mr. San Miguel's trial racist stereotypes of "macho" Mexican-Americans who "cross that border...and commit crimes" were invoked by both the defense counsel and the prosecutor. The petition filed last week on behalf of Mr. San Miguel charges that these overtly racist statements encouraged jurors to consider race in sentencing.

At the time of the offense for which he was sentenced to death, Jessy San Miguel was only 19 years old. As early as junior high, Jessy was involved in frequent altercations with other students. Jessy's family background, his long term exposure to domestic violence and history of childhood abuse potentially provided an individualized, mitigating explanation for this behavior. However, when the state introduced testimony concerning Mr. San Miguel's combative attitude and his fights with other students during junior high and high school, defense counsel characterized them as merely a product of Mr. San Miguel's Mexican-American heritage. Mr. San Miguel is scheduled to be executed on the twenty-eighth anniversary of the release of the United States Supreme Court's opinion in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972) which called a temporary halt to the imposition of the death penalty in the United States until procedures could be put in place to insure that the ultimate punishment was administered fairly and without regard to arbitrary factors such as race.

Should the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals refuse to stop Mr. San Miguel's execution, he calls upon Mr. Bush and Mr. Cornyn to confess error as they did in Mr. Saldaño's case, and agree to a new sentencing hearing free from racial bias. A petition for clemency is pending before the Governor and the Board of Pardons and Paroles. Excerpts from the transcript of Mr. San Miguels trial are attached. A copy of the petition filed on habeas of Mr. San Miguel can be obtain from his attorneys.