KTSM News – No decision in Walmart case hearing, another one scheduled for December

EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) – Friday’s hearing in the Walmart shooting case did not produce any decisions on whether Patrick Crusius’ constitutional rights were violated after five witnesses took the stand.

First witness called by defense was a paralegal at the DA’s office Claudia Hernandez.

Hernandez was identified in Thursday’s hearing as the only person from the DA’s office who had listened to the four recorded jail calls between Crusius and his attorneys.

She testified that she had listened to the recordings on several occasions at different times because she had not made any note that she had already listened to those files.

She said she had stopped listening once she realized it was a communication between Crusius and his council.

She added that she did not make any notes on the content of the calls and did not alert anybody from the office that she had encountered them.

Hernandez also testified that she was instructed by John Briggs, DA’s office division chief, to listen to Crusius’ jail phone calls.

Briggs explained in his testimony that this was a common practice for prosecutors and that he did not instruct Hernandez to look for or listen to calls with Crusius and his attorneys.

He said that he received no report from Hernandez about what she had heard in the calls.

The defense raised their concern over the accessibility of those phone calls on a web portal used by the jail and asked Briggs if he thought listening to them was unconstitutional.

“I don’t know why any attorney would speak to a client on a phone call that is being recorded and expect that they have any right to privacy in that conversation. Okay. I understand your client attorney-client privilege and all of that stuff. But at the point that you have that conversation in front of a third person, you’re waiving that attorney-client privilege, if that phone call is being recorded, that means I can listen to it. And you should not expect that you have any privacy in that phone call,” said Briggs in his testimony.

The defense argued that during the time of the phone call the jail put in place different policies because of the pandemic.

Briggs was also questioned about Crusius’ jail visitation logs he had in his office that were left by former lead prosecutor on the case Loretta Hewitt, who testified on Thursday.

He claimed that he had forgotten about these logs until the hearings this week and never looked into them.

The defense claimed that information on who is visiting Crusius might reveal to the prosecutors the potential experts they will be bringing to the trial and would give the state a strategic advantage.

Briggs said that the defense is required to disclose that information anyway and that having the logs would not be of any benefit to the state.

Three more witnesses took the stand, including a former El Paso Police homicide investigator who also listened to the jail calls and said he did not make any note of them.

Judge Sam Medrano did not make a decision on whether Crusius’ constitutional rights were violated and set another hearing for December 11 at 9 a.m. when more witnesses are expected to testify.

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