Woman says prosecutors weren’t ready to go to trial in harassment case

SAN ANTONIO — A San Antonio woman says the Bexar County district attorney’s office was unprepared for this spring’s trial, allowing her ex-husband to quickly be found not guilty of harassment.

“Exposing yourself and pursuing something right even if it’s painful, making yourself vulnerable is really hard. And honestly, one of my first thoughts was, “If this can happen to me, how many other women does this happen to?” That their cases are just not being taken seriously,” said Dr. Melissa Graham.

A DA official defended the handling of the case, stressing that there should be requirements for the prosecutor and that the case be tried at its first trial, while acknowledging that the agency would take a “critical look” at the history of the case.

“You’re dead. You’re (expletive) dead.

Graham, now retired, was a psychologist for the San Antonio Police Department and the San Antonio Fire Department. She filed five SAPD reports against Juan Hernandez Barrios between March 2022 and last December, according to public records.

The couple, who divorced in October, were separated and living separately when Graham began reporting Hernandez Barrios’ behavior to police.

Many of the disputes centered on who should be given the Northwest Side home they lived in, according to SAPD records.

In August, after reporting Hernandez Barrios to SAPD on several occasions, Graham recorded a lengthy phone call between her and her then-husband, in which he made sexually explicit comments about her minor children and said he wanted his soul.

“You’re dead. You’re (expletive) dead. Your daughter is going to have (expletive). You know your son is going to become (expletive) gay. He’s going to have (expletive) in the (expletive) (expletive),” said Hernandez Barrios during the August 2 call.

“I want your (expletive) soul. I want your (expletive) children. I want your (expletive) soul. I want all of you. (Swear) you! (Newspaper) them! (Newspaper) everything! (expletive) you! (Swear) you! Hernández Barrios said in the recording.

“It gradually got worse. Shouting obscenities. It was terrible,” Graham told KSAT.

SAPD investigators obtained a copy of the audio recordings and issued an arrest warrant for Hernandez Barrios on misdemeanor harassment charges a few days later, according to court records.

He was taken into custody and formally charged in September, according to court records.

Previously, in March 2022, Hernandez Barrios was accused of calling Graham 30 times in the middle of the night and making comments that scared her and her children, according to an SAPD incident report.

Hernández Barrios was also accused of activating the couple’s robot vacuum cleaner during the same incident, the report states.

In May 2023, an SAPD officer accompanied Hernandez Barrios during an inventory of the home.

While the officer waited outside the residence, Hernandez Barrios defecated in the non-flush toilet, urinated in the non-flush toilet and on the floor and rummaged through household items, a report states. SAPD incident report.

Hernandez Barrios, a retired U.S. Army veteran, was only charged in connection with the August phone call, according to law enforcement records.

Graham met with the prosecutor five minutes before the trial began

Graham told KSAT that she had no communication with the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office until a victim advocate called her days before Hernandez Barrios’ trial to let her know that the case was set for the following Monday.

“(I) finally met with the prosecutor five minutes before going to court. He told me he just listened to the tapes on Sunday,” Graham said.

Hernandez Barrios’ attorney, Jasmin Olguin of the LaHood Norton Law Group, successfully had the recordings excluded as evidence after arguing that the case was improperly charged.

The charging instrument alleged that Hernández Barrios committed harassment by calling Graham and not hanging up, thereby preventing the connection from completing.

But this way of committing the crime of harassment is no longer possible and has not been used to charge for administrative formalities for decades, a lawyer for LaHood Norton told KSAT.

Because the indictment did not indicate that Hernandez Barrios threatened Graham or said inappropriate things to him, the prosecution could not describe what was on the recordings or release them to the court, the lawyer said.

“That effectively ended my complaint,” Graham said.

The judge in the case returned a directed verdict of not guilty, according to court records.

This type of verdict is rarely used, but it is rendered when a judge determines that there is not enough evidence for a jury to reach a different conclusion.

“The justice system does not protect victims, not in this city,” Graham told KSAT.

Asked for comment, DA spokesperson Pete Gallego released the following statement to KSAT:

“We work hard to bring justice to victims of domestic violence and strive to continually improve while dealing with court schedules and many other dynamic changes. In this case, we had contact with the complainant on three occasions: first, within a month of the accused’s arrest, then five days later, and then we contacted him before the first trial of the accused. case to discuss the possibility of testimony at trial. Trial scheduling requirements prevented prosecutors from meeting with the victim in person before the day of the first trial. Typically, the oldest cases on the docket are tried first. This case was tried in its very first trial. For this reason, we did not meet in person before this context. We regret that this scheduling problem gave the complainant the impression that his file was not prepared. We apologize that she felt that way. This is not the case; The prosecutor reviewed all evidence presented by law enforcement in preparation for trial, including the police reports and audio recordings that made up the bulk of this case. Unfortunately, we were unable to pursue this particular case based on the admissible evidence. As with any trial, the final outcome is beyond our control. Nonetheless, we are critically examining the history of this case and ensuring that our work is thorough and diligent across all of our cases so that victims’ voices are heard.

Hernandez Barrios has not been charged with domestic violence.

Contacted for comment, Graham called Gallego’s statement “BS.”

“Apparently they didn’t take it seriously and the prosecutor was incompetent,” Graham said in a written response to Gallego’s statement, noting that she had no contact with the prosecutor’s office. until the victims’ attorney called him in late March and Graham was not given the opportunity to give prosecutors the proper context of what Hernández Barrios had done.

Graham told KSAT that the DA’s office should have made more of an effort to contact her before the trial to get her version of what happened, should have researched how to properly charge her ex and should have lobbied for the county court judge to listen to the recordings first. decide whether or not to reject them as evidence.

Separately, in November, after Hernandez Barrios’ arrest, a Bexar County Civil District Court judge denied Graham’s request for a protective order, according to court records.

“I apologize for what I said.”

A lawyer for Hernandez Barrios told KSAT that Graham could have simply ended the call and that she appeared to “encourage” her then-husband, which would have made the harassment allegation difficult to prove if the trial had been allowed to take place.

Hernandez Barrios spoke at length with KSAT outside the home he once shared with Graham.

“A phone call that I regret and I mean, I apologize for what I said. I was drunk. But I didn’t mean any harm,” said Hernández Barrios, who added that his comments followed to years of pent-up frustration.

“I told him (expletive). I told him all these things. I did it,” Hernández Barrios said.

“(But) I didn’t do anything wrong. It was fair,” Hernández Barrios said when asked about the outcome of the case.

There is a long resource list on the KSAT Domestic Violence Webpage.

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