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http://blog.timesunion.com/
In Texas, it’s illegal to solicit, pay for, and engage in sexual activity with a prostitute. What’s NOT illegal is shooting a woman you ‘perceived’ to be a prostitute, because she wouldn’t put out. That’s what many are taking away from the the San Antonio jury’s verdict to acquit a man of shooting an escort he hired from Craigslist.
For anyone not familiar with San Antonio, Texas, it’s probably the best place to get Mexican food in the states. It’s about five hours from the Mexican border, and one other little thing they won’t ever let you forget: San Antonio is the home of the Alamo. Ozzy Osbourne knows this very well after being banned from the city in 1982 for peeing on it while drunk, clothed in a green dress and heels.
San Antonio is rich with Hispanic and European culture, but what outshines everything is their impenetrable ‘Good-Old Boy’ mentality and way of governing that affects every aspect of life there, to one degree or another. Any time you see that many trucks, boots, and cowboy hats, you know you are no longer in the United States of America, you are in the Land of Tejas, and if you forget that, you’ll only do it once.
Ezekiel Gilbert is just your average, ordinary, hard-working southern guy that happened to have $150, a laptop, and some spare time on Christmas Eve. He wasn’t necessarily a killer out for blood. He responded to an ad on Craigslist for someone from an escort service to visit with him for 30 minutes. When Lenora Ivie Frago, 23, showed up, she was every bit as pretty as Gilbert had anticipated. What he hadn’t anticipated was what happened next.
According to Gilbert, Frago walked around his apartment for twenty minutes and then tried to leave. He tried to have sex with her and when she declined, he told her he didn’t get his $150 worth and wanted his money back. Frago said no, left the house and got in her car. As her driver was pulling away from Gilbert’s house, he ran out with his AK-47 and, according to his defense, “tried to shoot the tires” of the car. Instead, a fragment of the bullet (or the car) lodged in Frago’s neck, paralyzing her. Later, she became dependent on life support after suffering additional brain damage when the respirator she relied on to breathe came dislodged. Within seven months of the incident with Gilbert, the life support machines were turned off and Frago was dead.
The defense used by Gilbert’s attorney was that Lenora Frago had stolen from him - when Frago denied Gilbert sex or a refund, this became a business transaction resulting in “theft”. And, according to Texas law, you are allowed to use lethal force to retrieve stolen property if a theft happens at night. Interestingly enough, in a police interview played for the jurors, according to Detective Raymond Roberts, Gilbert “never mentioned anything about theft.”
It took that jury just eleven hours to deliberate and return with a “not guilty” verdict, but with a statute like this in place, it will take women’s rights advocates years to have it undone.
If you walk away from this story and say, “hey, she could have given the money back,” you need to think long and hard about what you are saying. There was no stated agreement to engage in sex for money between Gilbert and Frago, if it was assumed by Gilbert, that doesn’t make it fact. They had agreed to spend time together. Gilbert could have been more descriptive in what he expected or what he wanted, but didn’t because what he wanted was and is illegal.
When everything around a crime is illegal but the actual crime itself is deemed totally legit, it’s glaringly obvious that something has gone tragically wrong with our judicial system.
Not everyone will agree that a woman should never be faced with the options of being raped or being killed because of someone’s misunderstanding or assumption. And you can say what you want about this particular case, but in my opinion, I am going to assume that if the tables were turned and Frago had shot Gilbert for the exact same thing, a jury would likely never have found a young Latina woman innocent of shooting a white, Texan male - not under any circumstances.