A 132nd Judicial District Court jury deliberated for a little more than an hour Thursday afternoon before convicting Juan Barron and Nicole Barron of the second degree felony charge of tampering with physical evidence.
The eight-man, four-woman jury convicted the Barrons of altering the scene immediately following the fatal shootings of Benjamin Bruns and Joshua Hoover during the early morning hours of Jan. 24, 2016.
Testimony showed that after killing the two men, the Barrons stuffed the dead men’s bodies underneath their mobile home in the 2100 block of Ave. Z, then used bleach, water and household cleaners to eliminate blood from the back yard of the residence. They also dug up patches of blood evidence and placed that dirt in bags.
The Barrons faced the punishment phase of the trial this morning in District Judge Ernie B. Armstrong’s courtroom.
They could each be sentenced to between two and 20 years in state prison.
They were tried in October for the killings, but were acquitted on the grounds of self-defense on two of three murder charges. Juan Barron was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison for murdering Hoover.
During their closing statements to the jury Thursday, the opposing attorneys painted drastically different pictures of the defendants’ actions.
All three attorneys — District Attorney Ben Smith, Bruce Patton, who represented Juan Barron, and Anne-Marie Gillespie, who defended Nicole Barron, zeroed in on the three major elements of the offense required to be proved before the jury could convict the couple.
In order to reach a conviction, the jury had to be convinced that the Barrons knew a murder had occurred, intentionally and knowingly altered or concealed evidence of the murder and did so to hamper any subsequent investigation by law enforcement.
Patton, as he did during the October murder trial, accused “dominant” figures in Snyder with trying to influence the trial’s outcome.
“Do you think it’s fair what’s going on,” he asked the jury. “Do you think they should be going on trial for defending themselves? What’s fueling this? Is it dominant figures? Something’s not right.”
Patton also disputed that the Barrons knew a murder had been committed.
“I know what Juan intentionally and knowingly did,” he said. “He intentionally and knowingly defended himself. He intentionally and knowingly defended Nicole. And he intentionally and knowingly defended their child.”
Gillespie asked the jury not to compound the “tragic” nature of the case.
“This is a tragedy,” she said. “Don’t make another tragedy out of this. I feel badly for (Hoover’s and Bruns’) families, but that doesn’t mean you have to blame someone else for their deaths.”
Gillespie said the Barrons, who told police they concealed the bodies because they were panicky, drunk and high, did questionable things after the shooting, but not enough to warrant conviction on the charges.
“Did they do some stupid things? Absolutely,” Gillespie said. “But that doesn’t mean they committed the crime. If they didn’t know a crime had been committed, we can all stop right there. Each of the elements have to be proved.”
Smith, on the other hand, argued that the facts of the case clearly warranted a guilty verdict.
“I want to commend the defense attorneys on their closing arguments,” Smith said. “They’re good arguments — for a murder case. But this isn’t a murder case. This is tampering with evidence.”
Clicking off the elements of the crime, Smith showed how the Barrons were guilty of the offense.
“Did the Barrons intentionally or knowingly commit murder? Yes,” Smith said. “There’s evidence of self-defense, but you still commit murder if you intentionally or knowingly kill someone. We know that for a fact because (the Barrons) said so in their interviews.”
As for whether the Barrons intentionally or knowingly concealed the bodies, Smith pointed to the video interviews again, in which the couple both admitted to stuffing the bodies under the home.”
“They said they did it because they panicked, that they were drunk and high,” Smith said. “But intoxication is not a defense.”
On the third element — that the Barrons’ actions were done with the intent to hinder the investigation into the shootings, Smith was even more adamant.
“They didn’t put those guys under the house for safe-keeping,” he said. “They did it to conceal the bodies and keep that fact from being used against them. They said, ‘Hey, we turned ourselves in later. We’re good, right?’ No they’re not. From the time the men were killed (at 4 a.m.) until they turned themselves in at 9 a.m., they had all that time to get things the way they wanted. Only then did they get in their car and went to the police.”
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