By Craig Kapitan
San Antonio Express-News
BEXAR COUNTY, Texas — The former Bexar County jailer accused of smuggling hacksaw-laced tacos into the lockup to help a capital murder suspect spent most of Friday testifying in his own defense.
Both sides rested in the felony bribery and aiding-escape trial of Alfred Casas, 31. Closing arguments are set for Monday in 186th state District Court.
Casas told jurors he was working the Christmas Eve shift in 2009 — days after the blades and a sawed-through bar were discovered during a surprise inspection — when he was confronted by colleagues in riot gear and handcuffed in front of inmates.
He was cursed, ordered to take off his uniform and later released from jail barefoot, without his wallet and in feces-soiled shorts that were offered instead of his pants, he said.
“Under the stress and the pressure I was going through, I may have said anything,” Casas said, dismissing the multiple discrepancies pointed out by prosecutors between his testimony Friday and what he told detectives about the taco exchange in a recorded interview.
Prosecutors say Casas smuggled hacksaw blades in several tacos in exchange for two bottles of Xanax.
But Casas testified he met the girlfriend of capital murder suspect Jacob Keller in October 2009 to pick up a single taco - without hacksaw blades - for Erasmo Santa, Keller’s cellmate.
Santa, who had just been sentenced to 99 years in prison for a head-stomping death, had been asking him repeatedly for outside food and Casas finally gave in, he told jurors.
Although he knew giving outside food to prisoners was against regulations, he had seen other jailers bend the rules as well, he said. He met Keller’s girlfriend to get the taco because he didn’t want to spend his own money, he said, adding that he watched Santa eat the taco and was sure there was no contraband in it.
In a completely unrelated incident, he said, Keller later saw him limping while on duty. After explaining that he suffers chronic back pain and hadn’t had time to get a new prescription, Keller offered to get him Xanax. He accepted the offer, meeting the inmate’s girlfriend a second time for the pills.
Casas said he didn’t pay for the illegally obtained painkillers, but they were not given in exchange for special favors.
That directly contradicts not only the testimony of Keller’s girlfriend but the defendant’s own statement to detectives, prosecutor James Ishimoto said during cross-examination.
“She is offering you a bribe. ‘This is for helping Jacob,’ is what she told you,” Ishimoto said, quoting the interview. “They don’t just pass out Xanax for free on the street corner.”
Casas also on several occasions on the video referred to multiple tacos instead of just one and never mentioned Santa. Ishimoto pointed to cell phone records that indicate the defendant’s first call to Keller’s girlfriend wasn’t until the day after Santa was shipped off to prison. That would make it impossible for the taco exchange to have been for Santa’s benefit, Ishimoto said.
The defendant’s testimony was supported Friday by his wife, who said she angrily confronted her husband one day after finding a greasy bag in his car that contained a taco and napkins with lipstick on them. He explained to her that the taco was for an inmate, she said.
“I told him I thought ... it wasn’t a good idea,” Bobbi Casas said, adding that she knows for sure that saw blades weren’t among the ingredients. “I opened up the tinfoil ... and it just automatically fell open. There was nothing in it. All I saw (was) eggs and chorizo.”
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