Family wanted murder trial. But suspect pleaded guilty to manslaughter, was deported
Viviana Munoz-Cardoso wanted a new murder trial for a man accused of fatally shooting her father in 2007 at a Fort Worth auto shop.
In March, a mistrial was declared after a Tarrant County jury could not agree on whether 32-year-old Juan Eduardo Meraz killed Jose “Martin” Munoz, a married father of three, during an argument at Munoz’s shop on East Rosedale Street on Jan. 31, 2007.
“A mistrial wasn’t what we wanted, but I thought this would provide more time to collect evidence,” Munoz-Cardoso said in a Wednesday telephone interview with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
It didn’t happen.
In a plea agreement reached with prosecutors, Meraz pleaded guilty last month to manslaughter and was sentenced to two years for the violent crime.
Meraz has now been deported to Mexico because he was given credit for time served since he was charged in November 2017.
“We wanted another trial,” Munoz-Cardoso said. “The prosecutor believed it was going to be hard to get a conviction and this was the best deal.”
A prosecutor said Wednesday he also had hoped for more evidence.
“This is a tragic case, both for the loss of Jose Munoz’s life, and for the circumstances that prevented the defendant being held to the full justice we believe he deserved,” said Tarrant County Assistant District Attorney Lucas Allan in a Wednesday email to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “At trial, we put on the evidence available and allowed by the judge. There were rumors we hoped would provide more, but no additional corroborating evidence was ever discovered or produced.”
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Tip, fingerprint led to arrest
The case had been cold for years until 2017 when Fort Worth police received a tip of Meraz’s possible involvement and found that a fingerprint recovered from the rim of a tire matched Meraz.
When he was charged with the murder in November 2017, Meraz — a Mexican national — was serving his third stint in federal prison for re-entering the United States after deportation.
Police have said two men arrived at Muñoz’s business in a pickup, wanting to get rims changed out on two wheels. After the work was done, however, one of the men complained that one of the rims had been damaged.
An argument followed over payment, and the man pulled out a gun and shot Munoz in the head, police said.
In the March murder trial, Lisa Mullen, Meraz’s defense attorney, had argued that Meraz had previously worked with his stepfather on cars and could have left the fingerprint on the tire rim at any time before the murder.
Mullen also pointed out that there were four other fingerprints on the rim that didn’t belong to her client and that were never identified.
Allan, who prosecuted the case along with Jeff Bullock, had urged jurors to remember that, in addition to the fingerprint, Meraz had been identified as the shooter by Raudel Garcia, who worked at the shop with Muñoz that day.
Suspect deported multiple times
Meraz, who went by the nickname Lalo, had previously pleaded guilty in 2005 to two charges of engaging in organized crime in connection with a December 2004 gang-related shooting in exchange for a sentence of nine months in state jail.
After serving his sentence, he was deported to Mexico in October 2005 but would later be arrested in the U.S. three other times — in 2008, 2011 and 2014.
He was charged federally each time with re-entry after deportation, pleaded guilty, and sentenced to three stints in federal prison.
He was still serving the last stint — a 30-month sentence — in a medium security federal prison in Beaumont and was a few months away from another scheduled deportation when he was charged with Muñoz’s murder in late November 2017.
“Ultimately, the defendant needed to be removed from our community, which has happened, but this case will continue to haunt us as prosecutors,” Allan said. “Our deepest sympathies remain with Juan Munoz’s family for their loss.”
This report contains information from Star-Telegram archives.
This story was originally published November 20, 2019 at 1:50 PM.
