A man accused of targeting Hispanics in the murder of 23 people at a Walmart in Texas will plead guilty to federal hate crime charges, new court documents reveal. I was.
In court filings obtained by El Paso Matters, attorneys for Patrick Cruisuis told the Federal Bureau of Investigation over the weekend that they intend to change his plea to guilty.
The motion comes days after federal prosecutors announced they would not seek the death penalty against Crusius. The 24-year-old suspect allegedly hunted Hispanics in the 2019 massacre from the Dallas suburb of Allen to El Paso, where he drove 10 hours.
He told investigators he inspected a store in a busy supercenter near the U.S.-Mexico border and confirmed it was full of Hispanics. It shows him entering the store with an AK-47, killing 23 shoppers and wounding 22.
A federal lawsuit against the suspect includes a hateful manifesto he allegedly posted online shortly before the attack. The then 21-year-old complained of a “Hispanic invasion of Texas” and wrote that he was “simply defending my country from the cultural and ethnic displacement brought about by the invasion,” prosecutors said. claims.
“The U.S. District Court judge will grant the relocation petition and set a date for the relocation hearing,” a spokesperson for the federal prosecutor told the Post of the petition’s change. After that, the judge will set a date for the sentencing hearing.”
The office did not comment on how a guilty plea would affect his sentence. In that case, the worst sentence a defendant could face was life imprisonment.
The murder suspect still faces potential death from lethal injection in a state lawsuit against him.
Former prosecutor Yvonne Rosales, who had previously worked on the case, was accused of incompetence and improper handling of multiple cases, including the Walmart shooting, the largest in the city’s history. was forced out of his job.
