Ernie Lopez

Potter County

Ernie Lopez was convicted of raping a six month old baby girl to death.

Imagine going to court for that. Imagine standing there while the prosecutors swear up and down that you fucked a tiny little baby, who was probably just big enough to start crawling, until she DIED.

The viciousness, the complete lack of human feeling that would be required to commit a crime like that is appalling; you would hope that Texas wouldn’t go around accusing or convicting it’s citizens of something so disgusting unless it was, you know, true.

Mr. Lopez was convicted in 2003 and sentenced to serve 60 years. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned his conviction last year. They didn’t say “He’s innocent”, they said “Well, your defense attorneys failed to present medical evidence that could have proved the baby was not raped at all.”

In January, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Lopez's conviction [6], saying that his original legal team had provided him with ineffective assistance during his trial by "failing to call medical experts" to dispute the prosecution's theory that Lopez had attacked the baby.

Waaaaait a second here. The rape of this child was the prosecution’s theory? A theory that even the TCCA admitted was weak enough to be destroyed by competent testimony from a medical expert? And this was enough to send a man to prison for 60 years?

In August 2010, Potter County Judge Dick Alcala recommended that Lopez’s conviction be overturned, stating that Lopez’s original attorneys had failed to “fully investigate the medical issues of whether a sexual assault had occurred” and “the cause of death of the child.”

Shouldn’t that job belong to, I don’t know, the Medical Examiner? Isn’t it his job to tell the DA’s office that there was no actual proof that the baby was murdered? To make sure that they pursue justice, and not just a gruesome and news-worthy conviction? The Potter County DA has ‘signaled’ his intention to re-try Lopez, who’s home with his family for now on bond. I’m wondering how this new trial’s going to go.

“Your honor, this man is a filthy baby-raper!”

“Do you even have any concrete evidence that the baby was assaulted by anyone?”

“Uh…Wolf!”

 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/criminal-justice/the-child-cases/texas-court-voids-conviction-in-child-death-case/

http://www.propublica.org/article/free-but-not-cleared-ernie-lopez-comes-home

http://freeernielopez.com/