Jury selection starts Monday for Wharton murder trial
By BARRY HALVORSON news@leader-news.com

After the original pool went bust, the Wharton County District Attorney's Office is hoping a bigger crowd Monday will allow a jury to be seated so it can proceed with the murder trial of the man arrested in connection to the traffic collision death of former Needville ISD Police Chief Ernest Mendoza.

Guillermo Paniagua Paniagua, 31, of Wharton is charged with one count of felony murder and one count of failure to stop and render aid, according to a superseding indictment filed with the district clerk's office on Sept. 18. Paniagua has entered a plea of not guilty to the charges.

Jury selection will begin at 9:30 a.m. and will be held at the Wharton Community Civic Center, District Attorney spokeswoman Becky Ivy said. After a jury is seated, testimony will be held in the courtroom in the District Clerk's building. The trial is expected to take about two weeks.

Ivy said a larger than normal jury pool of 325 people has been called requiring the use of the Civic Center.

"The pool is made up of licensed drivers," she said. "But in the group there will be some who are deceased, some over the age of 70 that will use their exemption, some prohibited from serving due to a felony conviction and some that just don't show up."

The trial was originally scheduled to start Oct. 29. At the time, District Attorney Josh McCown said 250 people were called for jury duty with only 71 actually showing up. After the court ruled exemptions and approved excuses, the pool was down to 26 candidates.

"That would have left us with only four we could strike for cause and that just isn't a position I was comfortable with," he said at the time.

The jury will be made up of 12 jurors with two alternates.

Based on the inability to seat a jury on the original trial date, the defense team of El Campo Attorney Richard Manske and his co-counsel David Kiatta of Houston petitioned for and received a change of venue to Galveston. Visiting District Court Judge Daniel Sklar, who will be on the bench for the trial, reversed his ruling and allowed the trial to be held in Wharton following a hearing Dec. 18.

The Department of Public Safety Highway Patrol report of the wreck states the collision took place Jan. 19, 2007, 3.2 miles east of Wharton on FM 1301 near where it intersects with CR 113 at around 9 a.m. The report said Mendoza was traveling west in a 2000 Ford Crown Victoria police cruiser while Paniagua was headed east driving a 2001 Ford F-150 pickup. Paniagua's pickup reportedly crossed the centerline of the roadway and the two vehicles impacted right headlight to right headlight.

In the failure count of the indictment, Paniagua is charged with failure to "rendering reasonable assistance to Mendoza when it was then apparent Mendoza was in need of medical treatment."

The DPS report states Paniagua left the scene on foot and was later taken into custody at the Shell Station in Boling, about five miles from the crash site.