After four prosecutors and nearly six years, El Paso DA decides it’s time to stop pursuing the death penalty for mass shooter

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EL PASO — El Paso District Attorney James Montoya campaigned for the job saying he would pursue the death penalty against the 26-year-old gunman who killed 23 people in a local Walmart in 2019 and said he wanted “to shoot as many Mexicans as possible.”

But after the case had passed through the hands of four different prosecutors and dragged out nearly six years, on Tuesday Montoya said his office had consulted with victims’ families as well as surviving victims and decided to offer Patrick Crusius a plea bargain that didn’t include the death penalty.

“This was not a decision that was reached lightly or hastily,” Montoya said at a news conference. He explained that pursuing the death penalty would prolong the case for several more years.

The plea deal would allow a judge to sentence the gunman to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Montoya said he still believes the gunman — who was convicted and sent to prison by federal prosecutors as the state case dragged on — deserves the death penalty, but he didn’t want to delay closure for the families.

“I believe in the death penalty. I believe that this defendant deserves the death for what he did,” he said.

Montoya said a plea and sentencing hearing is scheduled for April 21.

Montoya said most of the families told him they supported the decision because some are tired of all the court proceedings. But some families wanted Montoya to keep pushing for a death sentence, even if it took several more years.

On Aug. 2, 2019, Crusius drove more than 600 miles from his home in Allen, north of Dallas, to El Paso and began shooting people in the parking lot of a Walmart that was busy with back-to-school shoppers. Then he entered the store and continued his rampage.

The victims were mostly Mexican-Americans and Mexican citizens from El Paso and Ciudad Juárez. One of the victims was a 66-year-old German man who moved to Mexico in the 1980s, married a woman from Juárez and settled there. The victims ranged in age from 15 to 90.

According to the indictment, the gunman uploaded a document to the internet explaining his motive: “This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas. They are the instigators, not me. I am simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by the invasion.”

Crusius faced both state and federal charges after the massacre.

In July 2023, he was sentenced in federal court to 90 consecutive life sentences after federal prosecutors opted not to pursue a death sentence. At the time, El Paso District Attorney Bill Hicks, Montoya’s predecessor, said he would seek the death penalty on the state charges.

Hicks had been appointed to the position after Yvonne Rosales resigned in 2022, a year after winning the job. Rosales faced removal from office over accusations of incompetence and misconduct related to the Walmart shooting prosecution, and state judges threw out nearly 1,000 unrelated cases because her office routinely missed legal deadlines to file charges.

“I am disappointed that the Walmart shooter will not face a jury for his crimes, but the decision to move forward with a trial or to enter a plea agreement is completely within the discretion of the district attorney and it is totally DA Montoya’s decision at this point, not mine,” Hicks told El Paso Matters. “I respect how difficult it must have been to make this decision.”

The state and federal cases against the gunman were also delayed in part because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

During the sentencing hearing in the federal case, the gunman’s lawyer said that his client struggled with mental health issues as a child. He was eventually diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, the lawyer said. His symptoms include trouble processing feelings and hearing voices in his head. And since childhood, the lawyer said the gunman has felt a presence that is not there.

Before and after the mass shooting in El Paso, some Texas politicians have described the growing number of migrants arriving at the Texas-Mexico border — many of them asylum-seekers fleeing violence and harsh poverty in Central and South America — as an “invasion.” The “ethnic replacement” the gunman wrote about comes from a debunked conspiracy theory that people of color and immigrants are looking to replace white Americans.

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