BACKGROUND: Police say Jose Luis Rubi-Nava admitted his guilt. If found mentally retarded, he may avoid the death penalty.
CASTLE ROCK — Mental health experts will spend four days in January testifying on whether Jose Luis Rubi-Nava is mentally retarded, based on a sealed report presented to Douglas County Judge Paul King on Friday.
Rubi-Nava, 37, could be spared the death penalty on charges he dragged his girlfriend to death behind his car in north Douglas County last year. The Colorado and U.S. supreme courts have held that the mentally retarded cannot be executed.
Kathleen Walsh, spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office, could not comment on the details of the report from the state mental hospital, except to say after the brief hearing Friday: “The district attorney’s office is satisfied with the report.”
She said prosecutors would not call outside experts to verify the findings of the report.
“We do believe the experts would agree with the state hospital’s findings,” she said.
Public defender Tamara Brady declined to comment after the court hearing, as she has done throughout the case.
She initially asked King for a week to argue about Rubi-Nava’s mental retardation – the same week in January that had been set aside for his trial.
“I’m hoping we can finish in four days,” she told King after he set the Jan. 14-17 hearings.
To be found mentally retarded, under court rules, Rubi-Nava must have an IQ below 70. A finding of retardation must have existed before he turned 18 years old, and he must have received services for retardation.
District Attorney Carol Chambers said earlier this month she would seek the death penalty if it was allowed.
After he was arrested, Rubi-Nava told an investigator he had beaten his live-in girlfriend, Maria Franco- Fierros, 49, on 10 occasions, including the night she died.
He waited four hours on the night he killed Franco-Fierros. She was late returning to their Glendale apartment from her job at a fast-food restaurant. He was convinced she had a boyfriend.
Rubi-Nava said he placed a noose around her neck, and tied the opposite end around his car bumper. “If you want death, here it is,” he told her, before dragging her body 1.3 miles down Surrey Ridge Drive.
Joey Bunch: 303-954-1174 or jbunch@denverpost.com
