Lewis Young sentenced to life in 2016 slaying
A jury in the 137th District Court deliberated for about an hour Wednesday before determining that a 64-year-old man deserved a life sentence for slaying a 79-year-old man six years ago with a pair of tree loppers.
The day before, jurors spent four hours before reaching a verdict finding Lewis Young acted recklessly for killing Conrado Zarate on Sept. 6, 2016.
Young was initially charged with murder, however, jurors found him guilty of the lesser included offense of manslaughter. The state-jail felony count of criminally negligent homicide was also included as a potential offense in the court's charge to the jury.
Manslaughter typically carries a punishment of two to 20 years in prison. However, prosecutors aim to enhance Young's punishment range to 25 years to life in prison by using his prior convictions, which include felony counts of forgery, burglary and theft. The convictions were from 1978 to 1990.
Young has been held at the Lubbock County Detention Center since his March 2017 arrest after Lubbock homicide detectives learned that his fingerprints and DNA were on a pair of loppers they believed was used to bludgeon to death Zarate in his home in the 2100 block of Avenue P.
Investigators found the loppers propped against a couch in Zarate's living room. Meanwhile, Zarate was found dead inside his bedroom.
Jurors heard about five days of testimony during which prosecutors presented biological evidence that linked Young to Zarate's slaying. They also played a video of Young's interview with police during which he admitted to striking Zarate.
Jurors were also shown photos of Zarate's bloodstained bedroom and images of his injuries. In one of the images, the top of Zarate's head had four distinct wounds in the shape of the bolts on the loppers and two bigger wounds that investigators believed were caused by the lopper blades.
A Tarrant County Deputy Medical Examiner told jurors she believed two of the blows to Zarate's head were fatal.
On Monday, Young took the stand and told the jury that he went to Zarate's home after a woman he'd only known about a week asked him to collect money Zarate owed her. The woman was Gloria Valdez, who died in a 2019 hit-and-run wreck in the 2700 block of Avenue Q.
He said he agreed to help Valdez because he hoped to be in a relationship with her. He said he and Valdez planned to use drugs after he got the money from Zarate.
Young said he and Valdez drove to Zarate's home in a maroon Cadillac and he went to the front door alone. Zarate answered the door and Young told him he was there to get money Valdez said he owed her.
"I told him about Gloria sitting in the car," he said.
He said Zarate stepped away from the door and he stepped into the doorway. However, he said Zarate turned to reach for something and began hitting him with what he believed was a stick but turned out to the tree trimming loppers. He said Zarate struck him in the temple, which developed a knot.
"It surprised me when he swung that deal on me," he said. "And he told me to get out."
Young said he grabbed Zarate by the shoulders, pushed him against the wall and pried the loppers from his hands.
He said he swung the loppers at Zarate, who raised his hands to block them and told him again to get out of his home. Young said he swung the loppers again and struck Zarate in the forehead. However, he said he didn't believe he struck Zarate that hard.
"I just I hit him because he hit me with it," he said.
He said he threw away the loppers and left.
He told jurors that Zarate was alive when he left and returned and said the woman he came with went into Zarate's home, presumably to get the money.
Young told jurors that the violent encounter happened by the front door of the home and he denied being in Zarate's bedroom.
"What would I want to walk in somebody else's housed for?" he said.
However, he said he didn't know how his fingerprints ended up on an empty jar police found in Zarate's bedroom.
"That's strange," he said. "I can't believe that. What would I want to touch a jar for?"
Young's testimony differed with the statement he gave police detectives, when he said he struck Zarate multiple times with the tree loppers.
Young told jurors he was drunk and high when he spoke to police. But he also admitted to drinking and doing drugs the night of his encounter with Zarate.
Young's attorney, Audie Reese told jurors in his closing argument that testimony from police officers revealed a flawed investigation that failed to rule out other theories of Zarate's killing.
"There's something else that happened in that house," he said. "There's more to this story that we'll never know because the cops didn't do their job."
He said investigators admitted that there were portions of the loppers that weren't swabbed for DNA.
"There could have been DNA on the person who actually committed the horrible crime," he said.
He said detectives succumbed to tunnel vision and stopped processing evidence once Young's DNA and fingerprints were found on the loppers.
He told jurors that based on the evidence that wasn't tested, it was possible that his client's version of events was true and another person killed Zarate after Young left and Valdez cleaned up most of the evidence.
The suspicious absence of pillows and pillowcases in the crime scene photographs shows a possibility that the real killer could have used them to wipe away evidence.
"Conrado was killed by someone else and Gloria covered it up," he said.
He said the investigation into Zarate's slaying was a display of indifference police showed toward a neighborhood mired in crime and drugs that he referred to as "Crack City."
"This investigation was terrible, there were blinders, they're trying to put blinders on you guys," he said. "Don't let them."
Reese also argued that his client was defending himself when he admitted to striking Zarate with the loppers. He said a neighbors testimony showed Zarate had a history of violence, while there was no evidence that Young had a violent history.
"That shows a pattern and a possibility that (Zarate was)the first one whose the aggressor in this case," he said.
He told jurors that his client wasn't guilty of murder but said if they had to convict, they should find him guilty of criminally negligent homicide.
However, prosecutors argued that the investigation clearly showed that Young killed Zarate.
Prosecutor Nicole Griffin told jurors that the evidence showed that Zarate's death was a tragic ending to a story about lonely people in desperate situations.
She said Young went to Zarate's home to impress the Valdez.
"It led to a senseless death that did not need to happen," he said.
She told jurors that Zarate's death didn't need to have been planned beforehand. Young could have formed the intent to kill Zarate when he attacked him.
She said Young wasn't acting in self defense when he took the loppers from Zarate and beat him to death with it.
"He provoked any use of force that Conrado used by going to Conrado's home, by demanding money and he was engaging in criminal activity," she said.
Prosecutor Laura Beth Fossett said Reese's proposition of a different killer was absurd, telling jurors they would have to believe that someone else used the loppers to kill Zarate without destroying Young's fingerprints on grips of the murder weapon.
She told jurors that Young's fingerprints on the jar found in Zarate's bedroom showed he was lying.
"Mr. Young is not telling us the whole truth," she said. "He may not remember the whole truth but that doesn't excuse his actions. That does not make this self defense."
She said she believed Young touched the jar because it may have contained the money he and Valdez planned to buy drugs with.
"This contains the secrets to Mr. Zarate's life," she said holding up the jar.
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Lubbock man found guilty of manslaughter in 2016 beating death
