SAN ANTONIO – A man accused in the brutal baseball bat beating death and dismemberment of a 35-year-old Jose Luis Menchaca has been found not guilty.
The jury deliberated for about four hours Tuesday and resumed deliberations Wednesday morning before finding Gabriel Moreno not guilty of murder in Menchaca's Sept. 30, 2014, slaying.
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Moreno had maintained all along he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Moreno's defense attorney, Albert Gutierrez called the verdict "stunning," but stopped short of calling it a surprise.
"Pure evil," prosecutor Christian Neumann said during closing arguments Tuesday. "That is what you all have heard over the last 11 days in this courtroom."
Jury finds Gabriel Moreno not guilty of murder.
— Paul Venema (@PaulVenema12) December 12, 2018
What the jury heard Tuesday was how Moreno, 36, and co-defendant Daniel Lopez allegedly beat Menchaca to death with baseball bats at the West Side home of Candie Dominguez, who is Menchaca's cousin.
Dominguez, 39, who is also charged in the slaying, admitted witnessing the killing, which she said was in retaliation for a botched drug deal in which Menchaca stabbed Lopez, who was her boyfriend at the time.
Lopez has been convicted and sentenced to life in prison for his role in the slaying.
In calm, chilling testimony, Dominguez admitted dismembering Menchaca's body and burning his limbs on a backyard barbecue grill.
Dominguez's testimony was part of a plea agreement in exchange for a sentence of no more than 30 years.
Gutierrez was critical of her testimony.
"Look at the agreement they make with a woman who confesses and did all those things saying, 'I don't care if he had to die ... yeah, I cut him up,'" he said during closing arguments.
Prosecutors admitted that some of their witnesses, including Dominguez, had unsavory backgrounds.
But they insisted that a guilty verdict was appropriate.
"Nobody deserves to die like that," prosecutor Matthew Ludowig said. "Nobody deserves to have their last breaths on this earth to be in the back of a dirty detached garage."