Update: Benitez received 60 years and a $10,000 fine Thursday morning. More coming up on KOGT Vocal News at 4:30 & 5:30
Jim Bearden walks behind German Benitez as he leaves the courtroom Wednesday.
German Borjas-Benitez was a teenager who played the guitar in church and participated in church youth activities. His parents and pastors said he went through a “rebellious” period, but they found it hard to believe he broke into a man’s house, tied him up, and kidnapped him.
Borjas-Benitez spent his 20th birthday in the Orange County Jail and on Thursday, a jury will decide if he spends his life in prison.
Borjas-Benitez pleaded guilty to burglary with intent to kidnap in connection with the kidnapping of local lawyer Jim Sharon Bearden Jr. He is eligible for probation because he has no felony convictions.
A nine-woman, three-man jury listened Wednesday to a second day of testimony in the punishment trial and heard final arguments from the prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Phillip Smith, and the defense attorney, Matthew Daws of Beaumont.
After about a half hour of deliberation, the jury asked to go home for the night. The members will return at 9 Thursday. The trial is before 128th District Judge Courtney Arkeen.
On Wednesday, a box of tissues sat in front of the witness stand in the courtroom. The tissues were sometimes needed. Tears fell quietly when people testified before the jury. Borjas-Benitez testified, along with his parents and the two pastors of Good Shepherd Church.
Pastor Joaquin Rojas, with his wife, Pastor Petra Rojas, talked about how German’s arrest surprised them. He had never shown any tendencies to be aggressive or violent.
“It was a shock to all the church because it was another side of German,” Joaquin Rojas said.
Borjas-Benitez began his testimony by apologizing to Bearden.
He then said he was raised by his maternal grandmother in Honduras and his father in the U.S. sent money. His parents had him sent to the U.S. when he was 13. He went to Edison Middle School and Memorial High School. When he was arrested, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office reported he and the two teens also charged with the crime, were undocumented Hondurans.
He had worked at different jobs in Texas after leaving home, but came back to live with his parents. He had worked for a contractor at Bearden’s home in the Dishon Plantation subdivision in Bridge City a couple of weeks before the crime.
When he saw a gun case inside the house, he thought he could get a lot of money for the guns.
Bearden was sleeping in late on the weekday morning of May 8 after his wife, a teacher, and children went to school. His barking dog with him in the bedroom alerted him to two masked men. One held a gun at his head and the other raised a baseball bat.
They tied him with electrical cord they cut. The two got all the cash in the house, including money from Bearden’s children’s wallets, plus jewelry.
Then they devised a plan with their accomplice to take Bearden to a Port Arthur bank so he could withdraw $10,000 cash from his account to give them. Bearden was given Borjas-Benitez’s cell phone to broadcast to them the time he was in the bank. He managed to take a screen shot of the phone owner’s information and text it to his phone, which the kidnappers had kept.
Borjas-Benitez told the jury he didn’t intend to kidnap anyone, but only wanted to break-in to steal the guns.
However, Bearden spoke of having Borjas-Benitez pointed a gun at his head and telling him “We kill people for fun.”
-Margaret Toal, KOGT-
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