Inmate accused of killing CO
By Scott Sandlin Journal Staff Writer
Albuquerque Journal
Caption: A memorial to correctional officer Ralph Garcia stands outside the entrance to the Guadalupe County Correctional Facility on Thursday, Feb. 22, 2001, in Santa Rosa, N.M. (AP Photo/Jake Schoellkopf, File)
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — An Albuquerque jury began deliberating Thursday whether inmate Robert Young, aka Diablo, is guilty of the 1999 murder of Santa Rosa prison guard Ralph Garcia and the attempted murder of inmate Adrian Mares.
The case stems from an inmate uprising at the Guadalupe County Correctional Facility on Aug. 31, 1999.
Moved out of district because of conf licts, testimony in the long-running case began before District Judge Neil Candelaria before Thanksgiving under heavy court security.
Fifteen inmates were originally charged in 2000, and the state sought the death penalty against Young and Reis Lopez. Lopez entered a guilty plea to the murder in May after the death penalty was rescinded because of the state’s failure to provide enough funds for the defense.
“This was a planned attack,” Assistant Attorney General Francisco Prieto told jurors in closing argument. “They wanted to get a correctional officer.”
Garcia was stabbed 28 times as he entered E Pod at the institution, and although other inmates participated in the stabbing, it was Young who planned, directed, launched and took part in the death, Prieto said.
Prieto donned a pair of purple latex gloves to hold up the 5-inch-long homemade knives, or shanks - one fashioned from a bit of plexiglass and the other from what appeared to be steel from a fence.
The first witness, he reminded jurors, had testified that he opposed the plan to kill a guard - not out of concern about Garcia, but because it would bring unwanted scrutiny to an institution that the inmates controlled. But when he was outvoted, that witness went along with the plot so as not to become a target himself, Prieto said.
Young’s attorney, Billy Blackburn, repeatedly poked at the credibility of the witnesses.
Outside of case agents and two guards, all were inmates with something to gain by their testimony and convictions for crimes involving dishonesty more than violence, he said.
“We have this enormous vacuum of (testimony by) agents who descended on the institution that night,” he said, “and what do we come down to? The testimony of a bunch of cons.”
Copyright 2008 Albuquerque Journal