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A Starr County woman was re-sentenced on Monday after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that she involuntarily entered her plea of guilty before she received a 50-year sentence.
Lissette Fuentes pleaded guilty to killing 75-year-old Elena Lopez Cantu and 45-year-old Maria Zulema Garcia in a crash in Escobares on June 12, 2016.
Her sentence was later tossed.
She pleaded guilty to two counts of intoxication manslaughter once more and was re-sentenced to the maximum of 20 years for both counts, which will run concurrently.
Fuentes also pleaded guilty to one count of intoxication assault as Garcia’s husband was seriously injured in the crash and was sentenced to 10 years.
“That sentence will run consecutively to her intoxication manslaughter sentences,” Starr County District Attorney Gocha Allen Ramirez said in an email sent to The Monitor.
In all, she was sentenced to a total of 30 years.
At her initial sentencing, visiting Judge Everado Garcia sentenced Fuentes to 20 years for each count of intoxication manslaughter, 10 years for the intoxication assault count and an additional 10 years for each count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
Fuentes was to serve each 20-year sentence consecutively while the 10-year sentence would have also been served consecutively for a total of 50 years in prison.
That sentencing was tossed by the court of appeals because in a writ of habeas corpus, Fuentes argued that her plea wasn’t voluntary because her trial attorney, J.M. “Chuy” Alvarez, failed to give competent advice and to review evidence with her, according to the ruling.
According to the Texas Department of Public Safety, Fuentes was traveling east on Highway 83 when she drove across the median and struck a Ford Crown Victoria driven by Garcia’s husband.
Lopez and Garcia died at the scene while Garcia’s husband was seriously injured.
