A 52-year-old man who was previously charged with murder was sentenced to two years in prison Wednesday morning after he pleaded guilty to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
Gregorio Garza appeared in-person in front of state District Judge Noe Gonzalez, who accepted his plea.
Garza, a homeless man, was accused of beating Michael Wright, another homeless man, to death on July 23, 2021.
On Sept. 16, a grand jury indicted Garza on charges of murder, injury to a disabled individual and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
The injury to a disabled individual stemmed from Wright using a wheelchair because one of his legs was amputated.
However, Garza’s attorney, O. Rene Flores, notified the court during his scheduled Oct. 20 arraignment that the case against his client had “significant” problems — a point prosecutors did not challenge at the hearing.
The only problem about those charges that was made public was that Wright’s autopsy results don’t exist and he was cremated, and Wright was still alive when the probable cause affidavit and attached police reports for the aggravated assault charge were generated.
Instead, the two counts of murder initially levied against Garza said he intentionally and knowingly caused the death of Wright by striking him with a wooden board and that he intentionally and knowingly caused Wright’s death while committing another felony, namely injury to a disabled man on July 23.
However, it’s not immediately clear when Wright died and without autopsy results showing the cause of death, it’s impossible for prosecutors to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Garza murdered Wright.
In December, prosecutors filed a motion to dismiss those murder charges, which Gonzalez, the judge, accepted. In exchange for his Wednesday plea to aggravated assault, prosecutors agreed to dismiss the charge of injury to a disabled individual, which the judge accepted.
Throughout the proceedings it also became clear that Garza suffered from a mental disability that sometimes impaired his ability to understand the proceedings, and Flores, his attorney, had also spoken with prosecutors and the judge about communication issues he has had with his client. Garza also does not speak English and a translator has been used throughout the proceedings.
He was actually scheduled to plead guilty last week, but during the video-conferencing hearing it was clear he had trouble understanding the elements of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, to which he was pleading guilty, so Gonzalez ordered the plea to be rescheduled and to happen in person on Wednesday.
Garza remains jailed at the Hidalgo County Adult Detention Center and will be transferred to a Texas Department of Criminal Justice facility in the future.
