Judge Gina Jones rejected a plea deal on Tuesday that would have given Hector Delgado 16 years for killing his 18-year-old ex-girlfriend, Alyssa Flores.
Deputy Prosecutor Michelle Jatkiewicz said there were evidentiary issues. Defense lawyer Mark Gruenhagen echoed there was an “overwhelming” chance his client could be acquitted at trial.
Jones said she understood, calling it too lenient.
“Everybody in this room will have to accept that,” she said, if Delgado were to get acquitted. “That is the justice system that we have.”
Delgado, 24, pleaded guilty in documents filed Feb. 5 to voluntary manslaughter.
Now the deal is scuttled, and a new hearing is April 22.
Lawyers also have the option to file a new plea agreement. The hearing was packed with both families.
As it began, Jones said the deal “gives me pause” because it was categorized under “sudden heat” – a legal term meaning in the heat of the moment, usually when the person charged was being actively threatened.
“I don’t see it,” she said.
Jatkiewicz said the pair had an “on-and-off” and “volatile” relationship. Delgado was “enraged” that he reached out to Flores nearly 50 times. She replied once.
Like Jatkiewicz, Gruenhagen also noted that both families had accepted the plea deal.
Anger wasn’t enough for sudden heat, Jones told lawyers.
“Sometimes I feel like it’s easier for a jury to make that determination,” she said.
Jatkiewicz read a letter in court from the victim’s father, Adolfo Flores Jr., saying his daughter was “cheerful” and “positive.” He never knew her future “would be taken” and wished he had the “chance to say goodbye.”
After the hearing, Flores said his daughter was a “beautiful person” who would give the “shirt off her back.” Flores was just starting her future in school, but was already working as a dental hygienist, he said.
Delgado was her first serious boyfriend. The father said he personally would have preferred a 20 to 25-year sentence, but he had to balance the emotional impact a trial would have on her mother.
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The crime scene pictures would be very difficult.
“I don’t sleep,” he said earlier in the conversation.
Her aunt, Roberta Williams, read a letter in court from a cousin stating the criminal case and media reports focused on Delgado over Flores.
“Nothing seems to be about the person he tried to erase,” he wrote. Delgado “erased the millions of Alyssas she could have grown into.”
Williams said her niece was “so smart,” “witty” and “overall fun.”
She was exceptionally close to her grandfather. She only met Delgado once or twice and remembered seeing him with his arm around her at the grandfather’s funeral luncheon.
“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of her,” she recalled he said.
Her sister, Teresa Aguilar, called to say her daughter Flores was dead.
All I could hear was this “earth-shattering scream,” Williams said.
One of the few sentences she could make out: “He killed my baby.”
Someday, Delgado could raise children and hopefully would teach them that “’no’ was not a death sentence.”
Later in the hearing, Jones said she especially took issue with what she read in Delgado’s pre-sentence investigation report.
He had already moved on with a “new baby,” she said.
One of his relatives appeared to have a brief outburst.
“What is the message that I’m sending?” Jones said of the 16-year sentence.
“I don’t think the penalty is enough,” she added.
The “legal reality of this case” was that there was an “overwhelming chance there will be a not guilty verdict,” Gruenhagen told her.
I understand, Jones said.
“Don’t think I’m doing this on emotion,” she told Gruenhagen. “It’s not my dice to roll.”
Flores is survived by her parents, two brothers and extended family.
Court records allege Delgado broke into a house where she lived, beat, strangled and shot her to death in her bedroom.
Hammond Police responded on Oct. 18, 2021, to the 4000 block of Towle Avenue. A door was broken open. There was broken glass and blood on the door.
A relative said he found Flores covered by a blanket. She was beaten so badly, he didn’t recognize her. He was at work when Flores’ boss at a dentist’s office said she hadn’t arrived for work.
She and Delgado met at a Chicago high school and dated for 3-4 years, relatives said. He was full of “jealousy” and had been “abusive” for years, according to court documents.