Witnesses testify to “Spider” dangers

A jury panel of eight men and six women got to hear testimony Tuesday about Michael Dean "Spider" Gonzales from both before and after the murders he was convicted of.

Texas Department of Public Safety Cpl. Erik Burse discussed a stabbing of another death row inmate that occurred in 1998 when Burse was captain of the Ellis Unit near Huntsville.

After blood was found on his shoes, Gonzales was named the only suspect in the stabbing of Robert Anderson, Burse said.

"It had the appearance of fresh, new blood," he said.

Investigators found Anderson, who survived the attack, with over 60 stab wounds, Burse said. An eight-inch handmade knife was found in a trashcan about 20 feet away.

When being questioned by defense attorney Woody Leverett, Burse admitted such attacks were common.

"This kind of incident was not a rarity by any stretch of the imagination," Leverett said.

The defense attorney also made sure to point out that Anderson, who was executed in 2006, was on death row for the beating, stabbing and drowning death of five-year-old Audra Ann Reeves in 1992 in Amarillo. He called child killers the "lowest rung" on the prison ladder.

The prosecution rested Tuesday after less than two full days of testimony in the resentencing trial for Gonzales, 35. He was convicted and sentenced to death in 1995 for the murders of neighbors Manuel Aguirre, 73, and Merced "Bita" Aguirre, 65, a year earlier.

The death sentence was "set aside" when expert witness Walter Quijano was found to be racially biased in another case involving Victor Saldano, who was convicted in a 1995 murder in Collin County.   Gonzales was returned to the Ector County Detention Center in June 2007 to await resentencing.

The defense is expected to begin making its case at 9 a.m. today.

Tuesday, past and present guards at the jail testified about Gonzales' behavior there.

Guards who had worked there while Gonzales awaited trial in 1994 and 1995 said he had thrown burning toilet paper onto a catwalk and sprayed urine at another inmate, hitting guards in the process.

Those who have been at the facility during the past two years Gonzales has been there said he was found with a syringe and a cell phone in his cell last November. Cell phones are not allowed in jail because of concerns over inmates making calls that aren't recorded.

Sgt. Alan Poor, the only one of the officers to testify to work at the jail during both of Gonzales terms there, said he initially tried to eat the phone before threatening the officers.

"We had to use a show of force to actually get the cell phone away from him," he said.

While Poor initially told prosecutor Wesley Mau he hadn't noticed any difference in Gonzales' behavior over the past 15 years, he later told defense attorney Jason Leach that Gonzales had fewer disciplinary violations the past two years that his previous time at the jail.

Earlier in the day, prosecutors brought witnesses forward to discuss Gonzales' actions in the years before the murders. Jurors were shown a KWES television report on gangs in Odessa, in which Gonzales, wearing an oversized flannel shirt and mullet hairstyle, showed off his knowledge of various rifles.

Melissa Beach, the reporter on the piece, told Mau that Gonzales, then the leader of the "Homies Don't Play" gang, confronted two members of a rival gang at the television taping.

"He approached and I can't remember exactly what he said, but I believe he indicated with his words that he was going to fight them," she said.

In his questioning, Leverett suggested the taping could have been a "media event" contrived by James Barnes, a local minister who has worked against gang violence and was starting a new church at the time.

"You don't really know whether it was just some talk or threat or if something was going to happen?" he said. "That kind of stuff makes for good, interesting, watchable TV, doesn't it?"

"I've seen better, and I've seen worse," Beach replied.

Olivia Galindo, a neighbor of the Gonzales and Aguirre families, testified that Gonzales was a problem since he was young, even causing his mother to put a deadbolt lock on her bedroom door.

"He was very mischievous since he started growing up," she said. "He loved to throw rocks. I knew he was leading up to no good."

While he didn't have the outbursts that briefly got him thrown out of the courtroom during Monday's opening day of testimony, Gonzales was still confrontational at times Tuesday.

When Eston Loving, a guard at the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, was asked to identify Gonzales, he said he was "The man over there giving me the California Howdy," referring to the middle finger the defendant was displaying.

Gonzales and other male Texas death row prisoners were transferred to Livingston in 1999.

Loving said Gonzales "chunked scalding hot water" on him in 2006, something that caused pain and bright red marks but no hospitalization.

Loving's testimony wrapped up when Mau asked him if there was anything that could be done to "absolutely" prevent attacks on other prisoners, nurses and guards.

"Yes," Loving responded.

"What would that be?" Mau asked.

"The death penalty," Loving said.