The murder of 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray is heaping pressure on Texas officials to tighten bail laws and on crime victims’ advocates who say the system should have kept her accused killer off the streets.
Johan Jose Martinez-Rangel, 21, and Franklin Jose Pena Ramos, 26, both of whom are Venezuelan nationals, have been charged with capital murder in the strangulation death of Nungaray who was found dead in a Houston creek on June 17.
The men are believed to have crossed into America illegally early this year.
Peña’s lawyers have asked a judge to issue a protective order keeping negative news coverage from unfairly influencing his right to be tried by an impartial jury.
According to the attorneys, all that press is “likely to cause substantial prejudice” against Peña.
The motion reads, “The additional extra-judicial statements to the news media are likely to produce a result of undue prejudice in the community to deprive the Defendant of a fair trial guaranteed by Article I of the Texas Constitution and the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.”
The lawyers also accuse Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg of saying inflammatory things outside the context of what they could say in a probable cause hearing. On the tape, Ogg tells reporters that “this is a horrific crime” and says illegal immigration was not only unforgivable but it was “a human trafficking violation,” adding to comments previously made on social media about how the system is broken.
Peña’s attorneys also ask that everyone involved in the case “refrain from making any further extrajudicial statements relating to this cause and to refrain from further dissemination of information, regardless of whether the information was previously disclosed to the public, concerning this cause by way of public communication, and for all other relief just and proper in the case.”
The outcry over the killing of Jocelyn Nungaray’s death has amplified demands for beefed-up border security and interrogation. While former President Donald Trump visited the southern border on August 22, through tears Jocelyn’s mother Alexis Nungaray expressed her hurt some more.
“It’s still very, very early. It’s still very, very raw. It’s still very, very surreal,” she said.
“There was over 300 detention beds that they should have been at (sic) because they were detained, and they were released when they shouldn’t have been released,” Alexis said. “One had an ankle monitor, but that didn’t stop anything.”
“So now I have to go through the rest of my life with my son always asking for his sister,” she said.
