EL PASO, Texas – The sentence for a former Bexar County constable convicted on two felony counts of tampering with records was thrown out by a Texas appeals court Thursday.
In 2022, a Bexar County jury convicted Michelle Barrientes Vela of altering security payment logs for Rodriguez Park. She was sentenced to five years probation, 90 days in jail and 600 hours of community service in Jan. 2023.
Jeff Alley, the Chief Justice of Texas’ Eighth District Court of Appeals in El Paso, made his decision official on Thursday.
In his ruling, Alley said he didn’t believe there was sufficient evidence to justify Barrientes Vela’s conviction.
“Because the evidence was insufficient to support Appellant’s (Barrientes Vela’s) conviction on either count of tampering with or fabricating physical evidence, we reverse the conviction and render a judgment of acquittal,” Alley concluded, according to court documents.
Barrientes Vela’s appeal was previously moved from Texas’ Fourth District Court of Appeals in San Antonio to the Eighth District Court of Appeals in El Paso as part of a docket reallocation.
Barrientes Vela’s attorney, Nico LaHood, released a statement to KSAT after the ruling was handed down.
“We are grateful that a higher court confirmed what we knew all along,” LaHood said in the statement. “From the onset, we maintained Michelle was innocent of these charges and this was a political prosecution. Our theory of defense was that there was no evidence that Michelle concealed or falsified any government record. The court of appeals found that there was no evidence to support a finding that she knowingly concealed or falsified a government record, which was exactly what we said from the beginning. We are happy for her and her family.”
She did not serve any jail time while her case went through the appeals process.
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