The 42-year-old man accused in the 1998 shooting at South Texas College took the witness stand Tuesday afternoon, telling the jury he believed he was being kidnapped when American and Mexican police took him from a convenience store to a hotel in Reynosa where he says he gave a coerced confession.
However, during a tense cross examination, prosecutor Orlando Esquivel walked Roberto Ivonovich Ojeda Hernandez through his confession point-by-point, asking him how authorities guided him through approximately a dozen details that were not public and that if they did so, how is it that the investigators are not hear on the video guiding his confession.
Ojeda is charged with capital murder over his alleged involvement in an armed robbery during class registration at STC on Jan. 13, 1998, that left 32-year-old security guard Carlos Hernandez dead from a gunshot wound to the head and sent three other people to hospitals with wounds from bullet fragments fired from an AK-47.
He has pleaded not guilty to the charges and while on the stand Tuesday, he continued to maintain his innocence.
Under questioning from defense attorney O. Rene Flores, Ojeda walked the jury through the day that McAllen police investigators and Mexican police arrived at the OXXO convenience store where he worked before taking him to a Reynosa hotel.
“They grabbed me by force and handcuffed me through the back,” Ojeda said.
He claimed the men told him they had to take him and to not say anything.
“I got scared. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I didn’t know where they were going to take me,” Ojeda said.
According to Ojeda, he was punched in the ribs while being handcuffed before being placed in an unmarked van. He said that once he was in the van, a Mexican police chief yelled at him to cooperate and slapped him while showing him pictures.
Ojeda said Ricardo Tamez, the lead investigator in the case, was in the unmarked van and witnessed this. Tamez previously testified that he was not in that vehicle and that he had politely asked the Mexican police to not harm Ojeda.
He also testified that the American and Mexican police were giving him a lot of details about that case, which is why he was able to provide so much information on the case in the 34-minute the jury saw on Monday.
Ojeda also told the jury that he was never on the run and had lived in the same house in Reynosa for two decades before his arrest by Interpol in July of 1998, saying he lived with his common-law wife and three children.
While he remained soft spoken during his attorney’s questioning and even choked up at the mention of his children, that demeanor changed under questioning by Esquivel, the prosecutor, who sought to cast doubt on Ojeda’s claim of a coerced confession.
As Esquivel took him step-by-step through the confession, the prosecutor asked him about how he knew about key details of the case.
After each question, Ojeda began letting out loud sighs as he looked over a transcript of that video Esquivel was using and asking him to read the answers he gave to police more than two decades ago to the jury.
At one point, state District Judge Rose Guerra Reyna admonished Ojeda to answer Esquivel’s questions as Ojeda repeatedly answered in a way that mentioned the investigators guided him to each and everyone of those details from the investigation.
Esquivel also reminded that no one in the video can be heard guiding him to any answers.
However, Tamez, the investigator, did testify Monday that the entirety of that meeting in the hotel room was not recorded.
Ojeda’s testimony followed the state resting its case.
Flores, his attorney, has indicated that he anticipates bringing two other witnesses to the stand.
The trial is scheduled to continue Wednesday afternoon.
