A former top prosecutor on the Walmart mass shooting case testified Thursday that District Attorney Bill Hicks often ignored her when she raised concerns about how the office was meeting its legal and ethical obligations.
Loretta Hewitt served as the trial team chief for the Walmart shooting prosecution from January to November 2023, when she resigned, accusing Hicks of using the case to bolster his chances of winning election this year.
She was the first witness called by defense lawyers for a hearing into their allegations of prosecutorial misconduct against the accused gunman in the 2019 mass shooting at the Cielo Vista Walmart that killed 23 people and wounded 22 others.
Hewitt recounted how she discovered on Aug. 31, 2023, that the District Attorney’s Office possessed recordings of several phone calls from the jail between the defendant in the mass-shooting case, Patrick Crusius, and his defense lawyers. She couldn’t immediately find Hicks to inform him of what she discovered, so made a decision to quickly inform defense lawyer Mark Stevens because of the possible violations of Crusius’ constitutional rights.
When she eventually found Hicks later in the day, he was “angry” at the steps she had taken, Hewitt testified. Hicks, who was present in the courtroom, sometimes shook his head when Hewitt testified.
“I can tell by the beginning of the words and the shortness of his words that he was upset. I can tell when we were in my office that he was upset,” Hewitt said under questioning by Stevens, adding that Hicks told her she needed to communicate with him about such decisions.
Loretta Hewitt, who served as lead prosecutor in the Walmart mass shooting case for most of 2023, testified at a hearing in 409th District Court on Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (Gabriela Velasquez/El Paso Times)
Hewitt said a paralegal in the District Attorney’s Office, Claudia Hernandez, told her she had listened to “six or seven” recordings of calls between Crusius and his attorneys. She said she repeatedly tried to talk with Hicks about the recordings.
“Because it was a serious issue and we needed to address how we were going to let the court know and what we were going to put on the record,” said Hewitt, who has 21 years of experience as a prosecutor in Texas.
Hewitt said she had a brief conversation with Hicks in the hallway of the District Attorney’s Office.
“I told him some of the general ideas in the case and some things that I had learned and some steps that he had to take, and he said, ‘We’ll deal with that another time,’” she said.
When Stevens asked if Hicks ever followed up on her concerns about the recorded phone calls, she said, “not that I remember.”
Hewitt said she was particularly concerned that Hernandez, the paralegal, listened to recordings of conversations between a defendant and his attorneys. Attorney-client conversations are almost always privileged, meaning other people – including prosecutors – can’t have access to them.
“It indicated to me when I spoke with her that she didn’t know what she was doing was wrong. She hadn’t been given any training or guidance on what she was and wasn’t allowed to listen to. And that was concerning,” she said.
Hewitt was the only witness to testify at Thursday’s hearing, which lasted three hours. The hearing resumes Friday morning.
District Attorney Bill Hicks listened as former prosecutor Loretta Hewitt criticized him during a hearing on Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (Gabriela Velasquez/El Paso Times)
Defense attorneys are asking 409th District Judge Sam Medrano to consider dismissing the charges against Crusius or removing the death penalty if he finds the prosecution violated his Sixth Amendment rights to a fair trial. Prosecutors said in a series of court filings late Wednesday that any mistakes made didn’t interfere with the defendant’s right to a fair trial.
Assistant District Attorney John Davis largely limited his cross-examination of Hewitt to her understanding of legal concepts such as work product and what sorts of materials needed to be disclosed by prosecutors to defense lawyers. He didn’t question her about her characterization of Hicks avoiding her concerns about ethical and legal obligations.
Under direct examination by Stevens, Hewitt also testified that she had five or six legal pads filled with notes from potential witnesses in the case that she left on a shelf in her office when she resigned in November 2023. She said she believed those notes should be turned over to defense lawyers in a legal process called discovery, because they contained material that could be helpful to the defense.
“The point of all of this is to be transparent in everything to the defense and then go forward and fight it on the facts and the punishment. It’s not to hide anything,” Hewitt said.
Davis said prosecutors haven’t been able to find the notebooks, but told Medrano they would keep looking. He also disputed that the notebooks contained the kind of information that prosecutors are required to make available to defense attorneys.
Stevens said defense attorneys will raise a number of other examples of prosecutorial misconduct when the hearing resumes Friday morning.
Medrano hasn’t said when he’ll rule on the defense allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.
Judge Sam Medrano of the 409th District Court speaks during a hearing regarding misconduct allegations in the Walmart shooting case on Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (Gabriela Velasquez/El Paso Times)
No trial date has been set for the state charges against Crusius, 26, who pleaded guilty last year to federal hate crimes and weapons charges in the Walmart mass shooting, which he said in an online screed was an attempt to “stop the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”
Medrano has scheduled a series of pretrial hearings on the case for next year, which could lead to a trial sometime in mid-2026.
El Paso voters will decide Tuesday who will lead the Walmart shooting prosecution going forward. Hicks, a Republican who was appointed district attorney by Gov. Greg Abbott in 2022 after former DA Yvonne Rosales resigned, is being challenged by Democrat James Montoya.
The post DA Bill Hicks tuned out concerns about Walmart shooting case, former prosecutor testifies appeared first on El Paso Matters.
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