The gunman who killed 23 people and wounded 22 others at an El Paso Walmart in 2019 will begin serving his life sentences in a state prison in Texas after his scheduled guilty plea next week, a spokesperson for the federal prison system told El Paso Matters.
“The sovereign which first arrested the offender has primary jurisdiction over the offender for purposes of trial, sentencing, and incarceration,” said Donald Murphy, spokesperson for the Federal Bureau of Prisons. “A review of this matter reveals Mr. (Patrick) Crusius was initially arrested by local authorities and is currently under the primary jurisdiction of the state of Texas. Should he be sentenced on their charges, he would enter the custody of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for service of his sentence.”
Officials with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which oversees the state prison system, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from El Paso Matters.
Crusius, now 26, has admitted that he drove from his hometown of Allen, Texas, and used a semiautomatic rifle to gun down shoppers at the Cielo Vista Walmart on Aug. 3, 2019. Shortly before opening fire at the store, he posted a screed on the internet saying he was acting to stop “the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”
He is expected to plead guilty Monday to state charges of capital murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and be sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.
In 2023, he pleaded guilty to federal weapons and hate crime charges stemming from the attack and was sentenced to 90 consecutive life terms in federal prison, one for each of the people he killed or wounded. The federal judicial system doesn’t allow parole.
The dual sentences raised a question of where Crusius would serve his sentences. At a news conference this month to discuss his decision not to seek the death penalty, District Attorney James Montoya said the decision would be made by federal and state prison systems.
At the federal sentencing, U.S. District Judge David Guaderrama recommended that Crusius serve his sentence at the federal “supermax” prison in Florence, Colorado. It is considered the nation’s most secure prison and has housed terrorists, mob bosses and other notorious criminals.
Guaderrama’s recommendation wasn’t binding on the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Joe Spencer, a defense attorney for Crusius, said the federal prison system could seek custody of his client by filing a writ of habeas corpus with a court. He said federal prosecutors – then working for the Biden administration – told him they’d prefer Crusius serve his sentence in a federal prison, but he said he didn’t know if the Trump administration still held that view.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas, which would file any writ seeking custody of Crusius, didn’t immediately respond to El Paso Matters’ questions about whether it would seek to have him moved to federal custody.
Spencer said he’d prefer that Crusius serve his life sentences in a federal prison.
“I don’t think he has the social skills to survive in (state prison). And that’s really why the defense wants him in (supermax) because it’s a more secure prison that I think he’ll be safer there. Because I do think he has a big target being a high-profile individual,” Spencer said.
The District Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the Federal Bureau of Prisons statement.
Murphy, the spokesperson for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, said a 1922 Supreme Court case decided how to prioritize arrest, prosecution and sentencing when two sovereign governments – federal and state – are dealing with the same defendant.
The case was Ponzi vs. Fessenden and involved Charles Ponzi, who faced fraud charges in both the Massachusetts state and federal court systems. Ponzi was a notorious grifter whose name is now synonymous with pyramid schemes.
Crusius was initially placed in state custody when he was arrested shortly after the shooting. He was transferred to federal custody in February 2020 to allow the federal government to prosecute him. He was then transferred back to state custody in July 2023, after his federal guilty plea, to allow for the state prosecution.
The gunman remained in the El Paso County jail the entire time since the shooting. If he is transferred to the state prison system after his guilty plea next week, the TDCJ would determine which of several maximum security prisons would house him.
Most of the state’s most secure prisons are in East Texas. The only state incarceration facility in El Paso County, the Rogelio Sanchez State Jail, only houses people convicted of state jail felonies, which carry a maximum sentence of two years.
The post Walmart gunman will go to Texas state prison after guilty plea, not federal facility like ‘supermax,’ official says appeared first on El Paso Matters.
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