GLENWOOD SPRINGS — The man who prosecutors say hunted his nephew across state lines and gunned him down was sentenced to 30 years in prison on Tuesday.
District Attorney Martin Beeson said he was “disappointed” in the sentence for a crime that originally could have resulted in life in prison or a death sentence.
“It will certainly affect the way we look at these types of cases and other serious cases in the future,” Beeson said.
Jesus Hernandez de Jesus, 34, was originally charged with first-degree murder, but he agreed to a plea deal of second-degree murder, with a sentencing range of 15-48 years. Beeson had asked for the maximum. He said he offered the deal only because many of the witnesses, like the defendant and the victim, were illegal immigrants and would not testify.
“Witnesses were already beginning to disappear,” Beeson said, but he said he believed the shooting was premeditated and merited a charge of first-degree murder.
“This was an execution. No question,” he said.
Hernandez will be 63 when his sentence is over. He receives credit for 294 days he has already spent behind bars. Tears streamed down his face when the judge read the sentence and he hung his head.
Hernandez admitted walking into the Ponderosa Lodge cabins in West Glenwood where his nephew, Ricardo Navarrete Prudencio, 30, lived and shooting him to death last June. Prosecutors say he drove from Nebraska to Glenwood to seek revenge on Navarrete for having an affair with Hernandez’s wife when he lived in their home in Orlando, Fla. They said Navarrete feared for his life, first fleeing to Colorado, and that he was packed and ready to escape to Mexico when Hernandez found him and shot him four times outside his cabin.
Hernandez’s public defenders argued that he was making the equivalent of a “citizen’s arrest” for what was a rape of his wife, not an affair. He was acting in the heat of passion, they said, and shot his nephew in self-defense. Navarrete was a Mexican gang member, they said, and Hernandez feared for his life. They asked for the minimum sentence.
Judge Daniel Petre sought middle ground. He accepted testimony from Henandez’s family members who said he was a “pillar” of the family. But he discounted the man’s version of the story: that he had accidentally ended up in Glenwood Springs after leaving Nebraska, spotted his nephew through a bus window, bought a gun for protection and confronted him. Hernandez maintained that he believed the gun was unloaded and pulled the trigger when he believed Navarrete had a weapon.
“Pillar or executioner? The court finds that he is both,” Petre said.
Petre agreed the murder appeared to be thought out, and he recounted the four shots that were believed to have killed Navarrete. The first struck his abdomen. The second, also to his abdomen, grazed his ball cap as he stood doubled over in pain. The third, to his femur, sent him to the ground. The fourth killed him.
“It was that fourth shot, the fourth shot, delivered after a moment’s hesitation into the vitals of a man already previously hurt by gunshots and helpless at his feet,” Petre said.
Hernandez had sobbed throughout much of the daylong sentencing hearing last week. Petre noted that outpouring of emotion, but said Hernandez also had the capacity to “coolly finish off a victim at his feet.”
dfrey@aspendailynews.com
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Mr. Rubenstein, a former director of research at the Hudson Institute, a nonpartisan policy research organization, said U.S. taxpayers paid more than $9,000 for each immigrant in the country, a third of whom are believed to be in the U.S. illegally.
In addition, more than 37 million immigrants in the United States, both legal and illegal, cost the federal government more than $346 billion last year, twice as much as the nation's fiscal deficit, according to a report released yesterday. The loss estimates, the report said, included $100 billion in federal taxes lost "from the reduction of native incomes caused by immigrant workers." He also stated that even programs that are not usually associated with immigration, he said, have actually added financial burdens to the taxpayers. American Taxpayers cannot afford to subsidies predator employers anymore.
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