After four hours of deliberation, jurors on Monday afternoon found Rubio guilty of the 2003 capital murder of the three children of his common-law wife.
Rubio, standing in front of the judge’s bench, remained expressionless as Gonzalez read the verdict. Since the judge had vowed to throw out anyone who reacted to the verdict, the courtroom remained silent after verdict was read.
Rubio, 29, was being retried for the murders of Julissa Quesada, 3, John E. Rubio, 14 months, and Mary Jane Rubio, 2 months, because his earlier conviction in the case was overturned on appeal. The children’s mother Angela Camacho already has been convicted in the case. Rubio was the biological father of the youngest child.
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After the verdict was handed down, Gonzalez quickly moved the case to the punishment phase, where the jurors will decide Rubio’s fate.
In his opening statement, Cameron County Chief Assistant District Attorney Chuck Mattingly told jurors that Rubio is a danger to society with a long criminal record. He said Rubio is violent and had tried to set fire in his prison cell.
Defense attorney Ed Stapleton told jurors that the alleged fires in Rubio’s cell were toilet paper fires that didn’t place anyone in danger and were simply a form of protest.
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“The defendant John Allen Rubio, butchered his children,” Mattingly said. “He butchered three babies.”
Mattingly stated that Rubio couldn’t be insane because certain statements that he made showed him to be sane, including the one where he places his hands in front of officer Sonny Cervantes and tells him, “arrest me” as Cervantes arrives at the scene, showing his knowledge then that the action was wrong.
“These babies, they were fighters,” Mattingly said as he choked back tears. “They fought valiantly and heroically to live until their bodies could take no more.”
Mattingly then stated that to Rubio, the children were just an obstacle to starting a new life and were thus treated as trash being placed in disposable bags.
If Rubio had indeed been insane and killing demons as per paranoid schizophrenia, then he would have attacked his younger brother who stumbled into the scene and, according to Rubio, was acting possessed, Mattingly said.
“He is a coward,” Mattingly added.
After Mattingly, Perez addressed the jury and began attacking some of the inconsistencies in the prosecution's case.
According to Perez, if Rubio simply wanted to get rid of the children, he could have placed a hand over their face or used a pillow to snuff out their life, not choke them, stab them and then behead them.
“Bodies don’t lie,” Perez said. “This was overkill.”
Perez then stated that if the children were a burden, why would he talk to Jose Luis Moreno about going to Austin and taking two of them with him.
Perez then stated that if the main reason was financial problems, then why kill the children if they were a “gold mine” because of all the government aid they were receiving.
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After Perez, Ed Stapleton gave the jurors a perspective of life from Rubio’s eyes, from being an abused and neglected child to growing up with sexual abuse and prostitution. He said Rubio then had to tried to have a normal life but was unable to because of mental issues and diseases.
Cameron County District Attorney Armando Villalobos closed the arguments by stating that the 5-year-old Rubio that Stapleton had been talking about was not the monster sitting in the courtroom that butchered three children.
According to Villalobos, if Rubio suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, then why would he go years without suffering from delusions — even without taking any schizophrenia medications?
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