A man who violently raped his niece and participated in the murder of another prison inmate -- and who has spent nearly 40 years behind bars -- appears destined to die in prison.
A unanimous decision released Friday by the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole recommended Jesse Garcia spend his natural life in prison with no additional parole hearings unless he requests it."At least with this board, we felt the risk was just too great and the crimes and the history too serious to grant him parole," said board chairman Michael Sibbett.
Garcia, imprisoned in Florence, Ariz., for his own safety, brutally raped his 5-year-old niece in 1958. The attack was so severe the child was found in a pool of blood and required surgery that left her with a 17-inch scar.
He had been in Utah State Prison for a few months when he and two other inmates killed a fellow prisoner after luring him to a secluded area on the pretense of a sexual exchange.
During the prosecution on the inmate's murder, Garcia told a doctor he had killed another young niece. He was a suspect at the time.
Garcia, 16 at the time, was sentenced to die for the inmate's slaying, but his sentence was commuted to life in prison four years later.
Decades later, in 1979, he was finally paroled but wound up back in prison after a robbery in which a 5-year-old-girl was threatened with a butcher knife.
Garcia had another chance at freedom when the parole board held a hearing last month to decide if he should serve additional time, receive a parole date or be considered for future parole hearings. Based on that hearing, Sibbett and the other members of the board reviewed Garcia's troubled history and decided the best place for the inmate is prison.
"Clearly, Jesse Garcia's home is prison. The tragedy was his dysfunctional youth, his violence manifested at a very young age which caused the death of a young child and the brutal rape of another young child. Eventually, he goes to prison and while in prison he and another inmate brutally murder another inmate. So you know those factors were taken into consideration," Sibbett said.
In an interview last month with the Deseret News, Garcia said he was ready to put his criminal past behind him and start a new life. He refused to talk about his crimes, saying only, "What's done is done."
It is only occasionally that the parole board recommends "natural life" as the outcome after a parole hearing. Generally, inmates are either paroled or they receive rehearing dates five, 10, or sometimes as long as 20 years down the road.
The "natural life" decision speaks loudly of the board's unwillingness to believe Garcia is a good risk.
"I do not see how we could ever feel comfortable in letting him out," Sibbett said. "It is a pretty harsh decision, pretty agonizing for the board. We do not do it all that often. There are cases that demand it."