So You Got Arrested

Honor Student Charged in Death of Predator Counselor Part II

• BRCK Criminal Defense Attorneys

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Attorneys Steve Barrera and Brian Powers detail the defense of John, an honor student charged with the murder of his high school counselor, Dr. Peña, who was grooming him.

🔎 Explosive Evidence of Predation

After a year delay in discovery, the defense gained access to Dr. Peña's phone records, revealing a massive pattern of abuse.

  • Hundreds of Thousands of Texts showed Peña grooming scores of male students over the years, using offers of college help as a "hook" to lure them.
  • The relationships escalated to drug dependency for some former students, with Peña coordinating with multiple dealers.
  • The Notes App contained 18 single-spaced pages documenting John's four visits, confirming John's consistent, respectful refusals to Peña's advances ("That's for the ladies, I'd rather not do that, please don't").

🏫 Systemic Protection and Prior Misconduct

Investigation uncovered that Peña had been pushed out of a previous teaching role for retaliating against an uncooperative student by messing with his grade. He was simply reassigned as a counselor, where he immediately resumed his predatory behavior. The school maintained a culture of protection, fearing the consequences of reporting a popular colleague.

💊 Medical Evidence and Investigative Bias

The defense secured critical medical evidence:

  • Cocaethylene: The medical examiner found high levels of cocaine and alcohol in Peña's system, which metabolized into cocaethylene, a compound that causes heightened aggression, sexual aggression, and increased strength/pain tolerance.
  • Investigator Bias: Bodycam footage showed a Ranger and investigator, who knew Peña, dismissing concerns about other victims, stating, "If it ain't in a report, it didn't happen," despite the known reluctance of victims to report.

⚖️ The Emotional Trial and Not Guilty Verdict

The intense, week-long trial culminated in an emotional verdict.

  • Jury Impact: The defense's theory was supported during jury selection when two panelists, a victim/target and a concerned mother, confirmed the widespread nature of Peña's actions.
  • John's Testimony: John took the stand and broke down during cross-examination while detailing his trauma and refusals, visibly moving the jury.
  • Excluded Evidence: Despite months of preparation, the judge disallowed the testimony of other victims, preventing the jury from hearing evidence of Peña's pattern of grooming.
  • Verdict: The jury returned a Not Guilty verdict after just 45 minutes of deliberation. Two jurors hugged John afterward.
  • Texas Self-Defense Law: The attorneys emphasized the legal defense: a person has the right to use deadly force if they reasonably believe they are about to be sexually assaulted or kidnapped, which applied to John's situation as Peña had physically restrained him.

The attorneys called John a hero for inadvertently stopping Peña's continued predation in the community. John is now doing well, has his pilot's license, and has moved on with his life.

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SPEAKER_00:

So you got arrested. A podcast that tells you what really happens after an arrest, hosted by brick criminal defense attorneys. We talked to the people who have lived it, worked in it, and been safe by it. Whether you're facing charges or just want to understand your rights, your options, and the smart moves that could change everything, we've got your back.

SPEAKER_04:

So this is part two of uh episode where we're talking about a case that Brian and I tried down in Demick County with a uh honor student who was accused of murdering his high school uh guidance counselor. And if uh you haven't heard the prior episode, you might want to go back and listen because it discusses the facts that are leading up to the trial. So as you start preparing for the trial on this case, you start to find some interesting information.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah, it was about a year before we got the discovery because uh the discovery being the police reports, the body cams, the dash cams, the uh you know, the 911, all of that stuff. It was a year because it took them that long to indict. So over the course of that year, we're just trying to build up what we can, where we can. But once we got the discovery, one of the key pieces of information was they found that Dr. Pena's phone, the deceased, and they did an extraction of the phone. And what they found was uh hundreds of thousands of text messages. As soon as we started seeing this, and I mean I think Scott can also attest in situations like this, it's not a one-off. You'll find more. And so when we ended up diving into the phone, and it was me, it was my assistant, it was you, um, because you you got on the case, thank God, to help me with it. And we started going through these, and it took us months, months. And what we found were literal scores of people that over the years, former students, because Pena had been a guidance counselor, well, he'd been working in academia for many years. And he had a basically over that time, you saw the same pattern with a lot of these kids, a lot of them now adults, with these text messages like, Hey, I want to help you, I want to help you uh get into good cool school and hey, come help me clean up my house. And then afterwards, you would see the text messages after these people would leave. Um, you know, because he, I think the the note section, he didn't start doing that until shortly before John. But the text messages of him saying something nasty to these kids after they would leave the home, and a lot of these kids would, you know, and they were all kids that wanted to go off and do good things. I mean, the majority of these kids were kids who wanted to get into college and go do great things. They were the example of that. That's why they have the relationship with the counselor. That's his hook is that I could help you get into this. And these were the these were the best of, I mean, these were what you won in Demmitt County for your kids to go out, and those were the kids he prayed on. And so what would happen is that he would essentially use the same tactics he used on John. And if it didn't work, he'd he'd call their mother, or he would, you know, text the father, or he would do something like that. And in the meantime, what you saw is he was also cultivating relationships with the people who could protect him. So people that worked in the school, like I'll help your kid with uh with their paper, or I'll do these things. So trying to make sure and and people even in local government that he had that he knew that on a texting you know basis. Uh, he had been the head of one of the political parties for Demet County at one point in time.

SPEAKER_04:

Uh trying to keep up this facade of I'm an important man and yeah.

SPEAKER_05:

So you've got this, you've got this duality in his text messages where it's respectful, I'm Dr. Pena, respect me. And these kids dark side. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Not kind of. It is a dark side.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah, it was a true hide where he would come out. And the saddest part is we got phone records going back like five years. So a lot of these records were kids that he had taught beforehand. And these kids were basically now they were a lot more hooked on drugs. They were hooked on the drugs that he got them on. So now it wasn't a question of let me help you get into college. It's come over and I'll help you get your fix. And, you know, and we found multiple drug dealers that he was using and he was texting and he was coordinating with. And so all of that was on his phone. And then what we find is we find the the notes app between him and John, and I believe it was 18 single space pages. He didn't lose one of them over any of his four visits. So you could see everything as it's happening. Yeah. And I mean, when you counted it all down, it's like, did John ever say no or hell no or anything like that? No, it was always like, that's for the ladies. I'd rather not do that. Please don't, in a respectful tone.

SPEAKER_04:

And so you you had you know, and and keep in mind, he's talking to a guy that you know is is involved in his future. Yes, yes, his ability to attend college.

SPEAKER_05:

Well, and then whenever we get into his records, because we started subpoenaing records, he'd been in, he'd worked for a number of different schools, and you'd found that he had actually been booted from some of these schools. But most critically was before he became a migrant counselor, he went from being a what is it, an AP teacher, dual credit, a dual credit teacher to a migrant counselor in the course of a summer. And a lot of people didn't know why that was. We did, and it's because the reason being there was a particular student that he was doing the same thing that he was with John, only this student was not going over. And he was at the top of his class and he worked really hard. And, you know, and and he Pena would, again, text him at all hours, the day and night, relentless, hundreds of times. Some of these kids had over a thousand text messages from this guy. And what would happen is that the night before grades were going to come come through, Pena was upset because he wasn't responding and he messed with his grade. And that was when this kid showed his parent, like, this is what happened, you know, this these text messages. And that parent raised hell. And even like Southwest Texas Junior College, the people at the upper echelons there were like, they they straight upset this guy cannot teach dual credit again. So he was pushed, he was basically pushed out of that job. They eventually fixed it, yeah. The kids doing great. But I mean, and what ended up happening was is that that that was when he they were like, Well, we got to find another place because he was well liked in the school, despite what you just saw. So they end up at that point in time saying, Okay, we'll make you a counselor. And so then after that, when he becomes the counselor, um, he's up, he's at it again because they even in that particular hasn't learned his lesson. No, because he didn't have to.

SPEAKER_04:

Well, there's no consequence.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah, there's no consequence, he just got a different job. Is it only boys he's preying on? Yes. Okay.

SPEAKER_04:

Now there was a mention of a uh a female did come forward, but we didn't really see any evidence to corroborate it that but and that that that was part of the difficulty is you know, some of these uh young men that had been preyed upon, you can imagine the reluctance to come forward as a witness to say that, hey, this guy was making these advances on me. And again, there's a lot of machisement.

SPEAKER_05:

Yes, and I mean there when we dug into it, there was one particular kid who had graduated years before, and he's a great kid, great guy. Um, you know, but he had texted him years for years, hundreds and like thousands of times, still trying to get him. This was his like muse, I guess. He and and you know, this kid, when we finally got a hold of him, I said, Oh no, he he came to my college once. Like he literally drove out of town a few hours and and basically caught me in the cafeteria and asked if we could go drink, and they did. And at one point in time during that evening, he felt drugged and he passed out. And he woke up the next morning and Pena was right next to him on the bed, and he had to go and check to see if he had actually been assaulted. And so, but he was also Pena was the guy that would help him if he ever needed something. So it was a very difficult relationship for him to try to, you know, figure out.

SPEAKER_04:

And so and then and so we're finding all this stuff out as we're getting prepared for the trial.

SPEAKER_03:

Now you're wondering, like, why are they still prosecuting? Yes.

SPEAKER_04:

Well, and and so you had mentioned earlier that there was this issue with the amount of cocaine in his system. We found that out during the trial or preparing for the trial.

SPEAKER_05:

In preparing for the trial, getting a hold of the medical examiner was incredibly difficult, incredibly. But eventually, when we did, she was an amazing, she did an amazing job. And she started talking about that what had happened with the cocaine and the alcohol in his system had metabolized into something called coca ethylene, which actually makes you uh well hyper hyper uh stronger. You're stronger, you are less prone to pain, you're more aggressive, you are more aggressive, and you are more sexually aggressive. And that was a metabolite in his body at the time of his death.

SPEAKER_04:

And they she from what I recall, uh, she said there was so much in his system that I mean, she wouldn't have been surprised if he had died from that amount. Yeah, that's how how much, you know, how much drugs he had.

SPEAKER_03:

But the state called the they didn't avoid calling the medical gamer, right?

SPEAKER_05:

Uh well they they it was a little odd uh how they were gonna go about it. I think that at the time they were kind of trying to throw some shade on her as well, but she was solid in what she did. And so, and it was her witness. And fortunately, during the trial, you know, I had we had Greg Jellick, who's an incredible expert when it comes to uh uh drug analysis and things like that. And he was on our phones the whole time helping us whenever we say, Hey, this is what's going on, and we would be able to coordinate our questions that way.

SPEAKER_04:

Now, there was a little bit of pushback from the school. Yeah, and and and can you kind of talk about that?

SPEAKER_05:

The school essentially, like at one point in time, I subpoenaed uh Dr. Pena's records. I said, I would like his records, and they sent them to me. And I said they uh per subpoena, and I said, I happen to know for a fact that he has been in trouble before. Why don't I have this? And he's like, Oh, you want his discipline file? And I was like, Yeah, I want his discipline file. And I mean, I'd subpoenaed all those other schools, no question. I got everything. So whenever I got that and I peered into it, it's like, okay, even as a migrant counselor, he was there were people that came forward and said, adults who said, at one point in time there was a pajama night. And uh, Pena essentially points to one kid, like, I'd like to see him in his pajamas. Said that to another educator. Um, you know, and there were other things like that where he would say things were like, How is this person still around kids? You know, but they still kept him in this spot.

SPEAKER_04:

It almost felt as if there was a culture of protecting him, yes, which is very dangerous when you have a predator who's being protected.

SPEAKER_03:

What happens is nobody wants to rock the boat. That's the problem, is you don't want to be the person at the school who points the finger at one of your coworkers and then and then draws fire down on your own position. Absolutely. So that's the thing. We have to go through life saying, I'm I'm going to do what's right, even if there's consequences. I know this guy's a problem. I'm not going to allow it out of my watch. And people aren't brave enough to do that.

SPEAKER_04:

And I'll tell you, Scott, that you know, when we started uh the trial out there, uh, we, you know, if you don't mind me jumping ahead into the trial, but we get into jury selection. And so, you know, we bring in all these people for jury selection, and we come to find that there was someone on the panel who was also a target. Yeah, well, a target. He was being groomed. Uh, someone on the panel, and then we find another person on the panel who she said she felt that her son was being groomed. And this is just in the random let her son go over there. Right, right. This is in the random panel of 75 members of the community. There were two. And so you're just wondering how widespread was this thing.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah, yeah. And uh, so yeah, we had when we started trial, we actually had, we had found a number of victims, and we spent months and thousands of dollars trying to get these people to answer the door, answer the phone. And we had a number of them that were brave enough to say, we'll come in, we'll speak on what happened to us. And so when we start trial, just like Steve said, I mean, we had a panel of 70, and we were picking this. It was three free prosecutors, and one of them district attorney himself, and I spent two days picking the jury. And so the state starts putting these people out, and one of the big witnesses they had was um the the ranger. And uh the funny thing, well, it's not funny, but the ranger actually uh had knew the the deceased. He had he'd known him for a very long time. And one of the videos you could even see the ranger telling the the sibling of the deceased, like, yeah, when he would start laughing, he just I mean, he'd start telling the story, we would all be laughing. He would he was talking like that. And you'd also have a personal interest in that. Yeah. And what was even worse and hardest for us, I mean, when I showed it to John, this portion of the video, he broke down. I mean, he crumbled because what he saw was the ranger and the lead investigator at the time from Denmick County Sheriff's sisters said, Well, I heard that there's other stuff like this, there might be other people. And he and they're basically like, Where's the proof? Where is it? Where's the proof? And he's like, You're gonna have somebody come forward and say something happened to me, something happened to me. And the investigator said, Hey, this is the way it is. You know, if if it ain't in a report, it didn't happen. As in skipping over the statistic that most people don't report. And so he said that. And as as our kid saw that, he just lost it because he's like, I I really was alone, you know, because they at one point in time, uh, his his girlfriend at the time went over thinking she was gonna help. And and to her credit, she's a wonderful lady. And she was like, I'm gonna help, I'm gonna talk about what things like were at the school. But when she was in front of this ranger who, like we said, knew the deceased, all he wanted to know was how well does John fight? Does he know how to box? Does he use uh does he smoke you know weed? Does he drink stuff like that? Stuff that they could use, not any no interest in pursuing these other cases or you know, you know, and so whenever this ranger took the stand and we started asking, like, did you've got this phone that has God knows how many victims on it? Okay. Um, you've got prior complaints made against this guy. Did you ever pursue any of them? Because you know as well as I do, there are victims out there in the community who are suffering from long-term trauma, you know, at the hands of this guy. And I'm sure, you know, even you though you can't prosecute the dead, you can sure as hell help the living.

SPEAKER_04:

That's right. And provide services, you know, whatever it is.

SPEAKER_05:

Nothing, nothing like that done. All eyes were on trying to convict this kid. And so they put him up there and we we cross-examined him. They played the 9-1-1 two or three times.

SPEAKER_04:

Um Yeah, and so it really did feel, you know, if you're like in John's position, that the entire system's rigged against you because there's kind of they circled, yeah, they circled the wagons around this guy to protect their guy. And and this this kid who's defending himself, you know, is up against it. So uh we're gonna take a break and we'll be right back.

SPEAKER_02:

The attorneys of Brick Criminal Defense have helped over 5,000 clients move on with their lives. When an arrest or accusation turns your life upside down, we have the knowledge, experience, and integrity to get your life back on track. Traditional legal ethics, modern legal tactics, the best defense possible to get you through the criminal justice system. Search Brick Criminal Defense to see our reviews and find out why so many of our clients have trusted us to fight for them. Brick Criminal Defense, helping our clients move on with their lives.

SPEAKER_04:

So back from the break. So we we did find evidence of these other victims, but unfortunately during trial.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah, so essentially, well, when it got to the, I should, I should go, John, it's been five years. By this point in time, John is probably 23, 24. The trauma has caused him to lose all of his hair, uh, or most of the hair on top of his head. Uh, by the time the state is done with their case, you know, putting on their case, it's our turn. Now we had a absolutely the an incredible, an incredible bench. I mean, we had uh Dr. Heather Holder to uh as a psychologist, Dr. Maureen Burroughs as our psychiatrist, uh Ron Martinelli and his team is absolutely amazing at use of force and uh you know police science science to talk about the fight or flight, um, you know, and uh we had David Gallant to talk about the phone extractions. And so we had just an incredible bench of people that came up and they all testified and did an incredible job. And then we decided before we were gonna put these other comp these other victims up to talk, it was time for John. And so John took the stand and you that jury um basically they saw his heart out there. I mean, we went through those the all of the messages in front of them, and we're like, when you said just for the ladies, what did you mean, John? I meant no, I meant this, I meant this. And he talked about it, and he's just that you could see the trauma coming through. And then whenever the and we we it was about five hours, I think, that he was on the stand, maybe seven. And when the prosecutor started cross-examining him, he he just melted, he broke down. And I mean, you could see the jurors wanting to reach out to him. You could see this, okay, because they were they knew they could see what was going on. And so after John was done with his testimony, you know, and he came back. Um, after that, it was time for us to put the other victims up there, okay? And I we had written, good God, spent months writing a brief on this thing. It must have been close to 200 pages with all the attachments to talk about it. Is absolutely I'm gonna, it's gonna be reversed if you don't let this stuff in. The judge took it under consideration for the night and determined it wasn't allowed.

SPEAKER_04:

So all of those and the jury didn't get to hear about any of these other kids that he was grooming, any of this other stuff that he had done with other people.

SPEAKER_05:

Took my entire bench out except for John's mom. Okay, so and as that's done, I put John's mom up. She's gonna be my last witness, and I will never forget this as long as I live. As I'm there and I'm asking her questions, uh, Steve, at one point in time, because I'm deflated at this point in time, it's like that was we just lost the issue of the victim. Yeah, hundreds of hours of work, God knows how much money to try to get these guys. They've heard there's other victims, just no names. Yes, and they don't know the story to show pattern. And so as I start asking Lisa questions, Steve leans over and to me, he's like, Man, you're you're dying here. You want to pick it up. And I was just like, You're right. And I mean, I it was it was one of those situations where it's like, you know, you know, wipe your tears off and get back in there, buddy. And so, and I did. I mean, it was like, and I and and I looked at him, I was like, Did I do it? And as he usually does, he's like, Yeah, this is good. And so we did, and we closed right there. And the judge said, You got um closings tomorrow. They gave us an hour and a half, okay, to be able to close. So uh fortunately, the hotel that we were staying at was, you know, it was uh out of town. David had gotten us uh John's uh stepdad, and we had a conference room that we would work at, and it was me, it was Nicolette, it was Steve, and it was my assistant Letty, and we worked until midnight on this thing, midnight. And uh, you know, and we we got all this stuff ready to go. And that very next morning, you know, we closed and it was 90 minutes, you know. And should I give the personal part of it?

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, it was uh yeah, it was very rough and uh it was uh you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah, well, and uh as a side note, my father had uh had an accident a few days before the trial started. He was in a coma, and basically, thankfully, his wife said I think he'd want you to try it. Um, and this was in Dallas. And so that day that we were finishing up before closing, uh, she had let me know that she was going to stop the machines. And so at 6:30 that morning, I wake up after we'd been working until midnight, closings at nine, and I got my phone, I got a missed call from her, and she had let me know that my father had passed in the night. And so I texted Steve, I didn't text anybody in the world. I texted Steve and I said, I didn't text uh Nicolette or Let be my assistant. I said, Hey, this is the situation, and I said, You might need to carry the torch if I can't. And he was like, Of course. And so I had him look over the void iron, said it look good, or the I'm sorry, the the closing, and we closed. And um, you know, and after it was all said and done, jury goes back 45 minutes. I think it was 45 minutes. Yeah, came back not guilty. Um, you know, it was one of the more emotional moments I think any of us have had in law in uh all the years we've been practicing. And John had behind him the entire, I want to say the entire room was full of John supporters. They wore shirts, but they weren't allowed to wear the shirts in there. But I think they were for the Yeah, they could turn them inside out. Yeah, and so um basically all of them were there to see that. So it was a monument, it was a momentous time. How did the prosecutors behave?

SPEAKER_03:

Were they were they in any way feel like like you guys did wrong? Or was there any re like?

SPEAKER_05:

Well, it's it's a primary, primarily democratic county, and the district attorney did say we have to make America great again in closing. And at one point, one of their reasons, the rationales for John's action was that he was jealous of the other boys that um Dr.

SPEAKER_04:

Penya was showing attention to.

SPEAKER_05:

Yes, and so that was why and so and you could see the jurors were not happy with those explanations. And after it was over, uh two of the jurors actually came and hugged John and asked him if he was okay.

SPEAKER_04:

Yes, the jurors came out and hugged him, and one of them had tears in her eyes when she was hugging him.

SPEAKER_03:

And but the DA still kept his job, he didn't get thrown out of he didn't get unelected after that.

SPEAKER_05:

Well, no, actually that he just gotten elected before the trial. So um, but yeah, so that was that was the end of that. And we hauled back to our hotel and got our stuff and and we got out of town, and you know, John ended up he's he's doing great. I mean, the thing is is that when you see John and when you protect you're work looking after him for five years, you just want him to have the chance that he didn't have before, and he's taking it, he's doing it.

SPEAKER_04:

I mean, he's he's living a good life, and uh you know, here was a sad thing. Okay, the sad thing is this young man's charged with murder, and this is in April of his senior year of high school. Right. At the time that we're doing the trial, it's approximately four or five years later. He would have been walking the stage as a college graduate, but instead, he's not able to do that because he has this murder charge hanging over his head for so long. I mean, it was, you know, uh when we got that verdict, um, uh I cried like a baby. I mean, I I was openly sobbing. And and a huge part of it is I was I was so scared for this kid that because I I felt that this was absolutely wrong what they were doing. And you never know with the jury.

SPEAKER_03:

Right. We we can't we we don't know. We feel like that that as defense attorneys, we feel like this is wrong that he's being prosecuted for this, but we can't guarantee that we're gonna be able to get him not guilty, which the point that we have to make, and we've been making this at different podcasts. A lot of times we get people come to us and say, Oh, this is self-defense. They think that, oh, because it's they're saying self-defense, that they're not even gonna ever be charged. Not the case. Yeah, just because you have a self-defense issue, you're probably gonna get charged.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah. Okay. And and and and a lot of times they'll see it through the trial, like they did here. Yeah, and and when once you're in front of that jury, you don't know. I mean, you don't know what's gonna happen, you don't know if they're receiving your arguments, you don't know if they're with you on things. And so we felt good about the case. I mean, but um I I'll tell you that uh the just overwhelming sense of not I I I wouldn't even call it happiness that that we'd won, just relief that nothing bad happened, like the right thing happened here. And uh yeah, it was it was overwhelming.

SPEAKER_05:

I uh for the few days that we were in trial, because we were in trial over a weekend, probably about seven, eight days. And at the end of every day, John's family would say, Hey, we've smoked a brisket or we've done that. And I would have to be the bad guy and tell Steve, like, you're not eating tonight. And we basically have to go back and we'd have to work until 11 and midnight. And we did that every night because we knew how incredibly important this kid's life was in our hands, and and we didn't know what to expect the next day. But, you know, and we'd have to let the family know, like, we appreciate it, but we gotta, we gotta work. And we did that night and day. Um, and the thing is is that for I think we're all of us, you know, Steve, me, uh Lethy, uh, Nicolette, we left blood on that floor because we really put our heart and soul into that. I mean, if you went into, I had an entire room devoted to John for years that I had stuff on the wall as far as these are my witnesses, these are the maybes, uh, this is strategy, all of that. People would have to walk through that to get to my office because this was, I mean, not an obsession, but it was just this was almost like a movement that we had because this nobody was protecting this kid, and we were it. And so we took that very, very seriously.

SPEAKER_03:

It's because it's the kind of case that sometimes you wish that somebody would look at and say, we don't need to be prosecuted. That's it. Yeah, it wasn't even close to that happening in this community because the way the community was set up in support of the of the person who was blessing these kids. Yes, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05:

And and it was amazing because we would talk to teachers. We would talk to some teachers who were actually parents of kids that he had made moves on, and they would cold shoulder us, or they would say, Talk to my attorney, or you know, they didn't want to help us try to help this kid because to John, he was the sacrificial lamb who was like, Hey, you know, nobody's making them doing anything on this guy, but now that it's done, you can go off and do your time now that the kids are safe. Because, you know, I I I brought this up the other day to my assistant. I said, you know, John is always gonna hold a special place in my heart because whether he feels it or not, he's an absolute hero to that community. Because the thing is, law enforcement wasn't going to do anything. The school wasn't going to do anything. If that guy hadn't, if this guy had didn't overdose, absolutely, hands down. There would have, God knows in the past few years how many number of kids would have fallen victim had John not done. And I mean, he didn't ask for it, he didn't want it, you know, but a lot of times that's how heroes are.

SPEAKER_03:

And we're we're not saying saying that that it's it's okay to kill. No, no. We're not saying that. We're just saying a lot, a lot of circumstances came together to push uh John into this situation. And and as we we expect prosecutors to look at all that when they're deciding what to do.

SPEAKER_05:

Yes, and I mean I think it's important that we actually note that when we're talking about self-defense, a very key caveat to self-defense in the state of Texas is if you reasonably believe you are about to be sexually assaulted, you have every right to defend yourself with deadly force. You know, and I mean I'm pretty happy with that law. I like that it's in place. Uh, same goes for aggravated kidnapping. What I didn't, as I'd said before, when he was holding on to John's ankle. How did he get out of the house? Well, that was the thing. When he get got out of, because he was worried about that as well, but he was in his mind thinking, like, I'm locked in while this guy's not letting him leave. And as soon as he let go, because it took a number of stab wounds before he finally let go, he didn't lock it that time. And he was able to make it outside.

SPEAKER_03:

So I just assumed he rummaged through and found the keys.

SPEAKER_05:

No, no, he was it was actually all right that time. So he managed to get out, but no, he was very much reasonably afraid of even being kidnapped uh because it fit the it fit the profile for aggravated kidnapping as well. So he had multiple grounds on which he could establish deadly use of force and self-defense. And that's why Dr. Ron Martinelli, an incredible witness, on the stand, him and you know, every but Dr. Martinelli gave laid it out so incredibly well how the fight or flight works in the human body and why he does what he does. And and the medical examiner had even said, because he were trying to say all these stab wounds to the chest and to the, you know, were signs of rage. But the medical examiner said, no, these were very superficial wounds. This was a kid who was basically just trying to try to get him to let go, and and they were like a quarter inch deep. And so it's like, no, these were not deep at all, and they could have been. How big a kid was John? John was probably about oh god, five nine, five ten. Good, he was in good shape. He boxed, he knew how to box, but that's why when he punched Carlos Pena in the face, he wasn't he wasn't a no no because this dude's a big slender. John's a a slender guy, yeah. And when he punched this guy in the face, he's like, and he didn't go down, he thought it would be like the movies that he would just go down, but it's like, no, all it did was make him mad. Yeah, and so that's um just horrible. Um, but he's doing that good now. He actually has gotten uh his pilot's license. He is a solo pilot now. Um great besides. Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay, and so I think the the family has. And uh, you know, Lisa had some, she had to deal with some stuff afterwards, but the whole family brought came together and they're doing good now.

SPEAKER_04:

Well, I I appreciate you coming in to talk about this case. I mean, it was such a fascinating case. I know that that was one of the biggest cases I've ever been involved in in my life, and uh it was very a very emotional time, and I'm glad that the right thing happened and the right outcome occurred. So uh we appreciate you all listening to us. Uh, this is So You Got Arrested with Steve Barrera, Brian Powers, thank you for coming in. Thanks for having me and Scott Simpson. Uh thank you for your time.

SPEAKER_00:

Thanks for listening to So You Got Arrested. If you found this podcast helpful, share it with someone who needs to hear it. For more legal insights and real talk from the front lines of the Texas justice system. Follow us and subscribe. And remember, we're criminal defense at your back. For more information at Fr at Defense.com