GUILTY OF MURDER:Defendants enter guilty pleas in Thompson case
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The defendant, Ruben Pimentel, 34, with his head bowed at the podium speaking in a barely audible voice, entered guilty pleas Friday to charges of first-degree murder, aggravated arson and sale of drugs. In return for his plea, prosecutors withdrew the death penalty while Pimentel accepted life without chance of parole.
His co-defendants, halfbrothers Franklin De La Cruz, 28, and Luiz Gomez, 21, entered guilty pleas to charges of second-degree murder and aggravated arson. They will serve 36 years each in prison, both at 100 percent. Had Pimentel not entered a plea and the state gone ahead with the death penalty case, the New York brothers had agreed to testify against the ringleader.
Prosecutors say it was Pimentel who set Thompson, 35, on fire in the late hours of Sept. 11, 2003 as she slept on a couch inside a residence at a local trailer park. He was mad because he believed, wrongly, that she had stolen cocaine from him during their trip together back from New York. It was during the trip the day before that Gomez and De La Cruz were brought to Tennessee.
Prosecutors say Gomez and De La Cruz held witnesses at bay inside the trailer while Pimentel doused the sleeping woman in gas and set her afire. She died eight days later from the burns.
According to District Attorney General Dale Potter, the choice to withdraw the death penalty was made given the apparent reluctance of the state to actually execute those who have been sentenced to death. The death penalty had been sought in the beginning given the heinousness of the crime and the large amount of evidence against the men, with Potter saying lawmen did the best job he has ever seen in a murder case in making the case against the three defendants.
“When we announced we were going to seek the death penalty back in 2003, it appeared the state was serious about enforcing it,” Potter said, irritated over Tennessee’s reluctance to execute the death penalty. “But, since then the state has backed off on seeing the judgments get carried out. Given this and the high costs associated with trying death penalty cases, we decided on this plea agreement.”
The last death penalty case, the Myers lane triple murder case against Doug Myers, cost $266,000 even though the case ultimately went to trial as a non-death penalty case. His co-defendant, Johnny Lewis, cost $170,000 to try. The numbers are not in on the Pimentel group; however, each was afforded two death penalty qualified attorneys, interpreters if needed and private investigators. It is believed their cases will rival the costs of Myers and Lewis even though the Pimentel, Gomez and De La Cruz cases did not go to trial.
Additionally, a huge pool of 600 jurors (as opposed to the normal 250) were drawn to hear the trial this summer with each directed to fill out questionnaires for the death penalty case. Had the case gone to trial, the jurors would have likely been sequestered for two weeks and the cost of the case likely doubled.
“It’s in the interest of justice,” Potter said. “The man who was the ring leader will be in jail the rest of his life while those who helped him will serve their sentences at 100 percent.”
Potter said his office was unable to find relatives of the victim to hear the plea agreement. There was no family or friends in the gallery for either the victim or the defendants.