Jurors begin deliberations in Mexican Mafia capital murder case

Witnesses have testified that 33-year-old Harlingen mother Jo Ann Chavez grew deeply entrenched in the drug trafficking business of the notorious prison gang the Mexican Mafia until the “captain,” Wilfredo Padilla, ordered her murder.

But Jo Ann’s sister, who declined to give her name for fear of the men in the gang, simply remembers her older sibling as a woman with a soothing presence and beautiful voice.

While waiting for a verdict in her sister’s capital murder case, the 36-year-old woman recalled with teary eyes a tough day in which she tried over and over to stop her new baby from crying. Jo Ann took the child into her arms and began singing.

“As soon as she heard Jo Ann’s voice, the baby stopped crying,” she said, smiling.

Several of Jo Ann’s sisters and nieces waited anxiously outside of the courtroom while the jury deliberated for several hours Monday afternoon.

Attorneys delivered their closing arguments Monday morning after eight days of trial for the capital murder case against Padilla, allegedly a high-ranking member of the gang.

The jury met for about five hours without reaching a verdict. Jurors will gather again this morning at the Cameron County Courthouse to continue deliberations.

Padilla is charged with capital murder and engaging in organized criminal activity for allegedly ordering the death of Chavez. The woman disappeared in 2003, and her heavily decomposed body was found in a remote area of Willacy County in 2005.

Nine others are charged with Chavez’s murder. Many have pleaded guilty and testified against Padilla.

At the crux of the closing arguments of defense attorneys Trey Garza III and Ed. K. Cyganiewcz was corroboration of the testimony of the accomplices and jailhouse snitches — a main thread throughout the trial.

Cyganiewcz noted that Oscar Esteban Salazar, a witness who testified Padilla ordered Chavez’s murder, received a plea deal for six years in prison, most of which he has already been served, in exchange for his testimony.

“Salazar might be on the elevator, going home along with you,” he told the jury. “Can you think of a better motive?”

But Chief Assistant District Attorney Chuck Mattingly gave an impassioned defense of the state’s witnesses, arguing that testimony from law enforcement and Chavez’s sister matched that of Padilla’s accomplices.

He said the state has never tried to hide that the witnesses were “bad men.”

“If you’re going to prosecute the devil, you’ve got to go to hell to get your witnesses,” Mattingly said.

Jo Ann’s sister has sat in the courtroom each day of the lengthy trial.

At times, the testimony was difficult to hear, she said.

Members of the Mexican Mafia described how Jo Ann was romantically involved with various drug traffickers and spent a year in Ohio with the gang while they moved drugs from the Rio Grande Valley to points north.

Law enforcement and medical experts described how the woman was beaten to death and thrown into a hand-dug grave.

“It’s hard to digest,” she said of the testimony. “It sits there in the pit of your stomach.”

But she has returned to the court each day to learn the truth after eight years since her sister disappeared from a Harlingen mall.

“The truth is hard to take, but the truth is the truth,” she said.

If Padilla is convicted, the jury will hear testimony in the punishment phase of the trial. He could receive the death sentence if he is found guilty on the capital murder charge.

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Madeline Buckley is a reporter for The Brownsville Herald.