Joey Estrella got drunk on wine while playing cards with his cellmates, cousins William and Rudy Sablan, at a federal prison in Colorado. That’s when the Sablans allegedly choked Estrella with a cord, slit his throat and mutilated his body.
More than seven years after the slaying at the U.S. Penitentiary in Florence, William Sablan is the first of the cousins to go on trial in U.S. District Court in Denver. Both have been charged with first-degree murder, and both could face the death penalty if convicted.
Jury selection in the trial is underway, and attorneys’ opening statements are expected to start this week. The trial could take four months.
No one has been sentenced to death in Denver’s federal court since Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh a decade ago. He was executed in 2001.
There are 46 people on federal death row, none from Colorado, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. But since the federal death penalty was reinstated in 1988, only two other federal convicts besides McVeigh have been executed.
At least for William Sablan, the question is not so much whether he killed Estrella – he has repeatedly confessed his involvement – but whether he was mentally impaired at the time.
His four attorneys claim he suffered an untreated mental defect. In court briefs, they say Sablan’s violent acts were because prison authorities refused to treat his mental illness.
“When properly medicated, William is cooperative,” defense attorney Patrick Burke said in a brief.
The defense attorneys say they have a lengthy list of psychological experts who could testify as to Sablan’s mental problems, including a psychiatrist from his former home island of Saipan who would say that Sablan was psychotic and on medication in an island prison in 1997 and 1998.
Estrella was a bank robber serving a 12-year sentence when he was placed in a cell with the Sablans. The three men drank wine and played cards on the night of Oct. 10, 1999, other inmates have testified. Prison officials have said inmates were known to concoct their own wine from sugar and fruit.
By midnight, Estrella was dead on the floor of the cell, his body mutilated.
“Look at what I did to him,” William Sablan boasted, according to a tape made by prison officers.
Authorities believe a prison- issued razor blade may have been used in the brutal attack.
Federal prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against the Sablans in part because of the horrific nature of the killing and the cousins’ lengthy histories of violence.
“The defendant’s enjoyment of the killing, … celebratory shouts … and debasing the body constitutes relishing the crime,” federal prosecutors Brenda Taylor and Philip Brimmer said in court documents.
Starting in 1984, William Sablan committed four robberies using guns and knives while living on Saipan, a U.S. possession in the Pacific.
In March 1999, during a riot at the Central Male Detention Facility on Saipan, Sablan pointed a stolen pistol at the head of an inmate and pulled the trigger twice. But the gun didn’t fire.
According to federal court files, Rudy Sablan’s criminal history is also violent. Beginning in 1988, when he beat a man into unconsciousness with a belt buckle, Rudy Sablan has been accused of assaulting or trying to kill numerous inmates.
In hearings leading up to William Sablan’s trial, defense attorneys also questioned why three men were placed in what was supposed to be a two-man cell in a special holding area, and why officials didn’t take more precautions given William Sablan’s history of violence and mental- health problems.
Prosecution and defense expenses for federal death-penalty cases where mental competency is an issue can exceed $4 million, said Houston lawyer Richard Burr, a member of Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel, which assists defenses in death- penalty cases.
In this case, travel expenses for police and psychiatrists coming from Saipan could boost the bill.
Such trials “are very expensive,” Burr said. “Lawyers are paid for their hours, and they don’t have to cut corners.”
Both the defense and prosecution would interview dozens of witnesses about the defendant’s life if the case enters the penalty phase, he said. Even if William Sablan is not acquitted because of a mental illness, insanity could be a compelling mitigating factor in the penalty phase, Burr said.
And in the Sablan trial, taxpayers will be footing the legal bills for both sides.
Rudy Sablan’s trial will follow his cousin’s trial.
Staff writer Kirk Mitchell can be reached at 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com.
