Bexar County jurors saw a bloody scene captured by body camera video in the murder trial of Shandrick Van Anthony Buckley, who is accused of beating his jail cellmate to death.
Testimony began Wednesday in the case against Buckley, who faces a capital murder charge in the 2019 beating death of Alexander Wise, 29. If convicted, he would be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty.
Buckley was already in jail on a murder charge, accused in the 2017 stomping death of Jose Gustavo Hernandez, when he was placed in a cell with Wise on May 30, 2019, prosecutors say.
The two men had been assigned to a special unit for violent inmates because of separate incidents they had been involved in that day, according to Bexar County officials. About an hour after the men were put in the same cell, detention officers saw blood pooling under the cell door, prosecutors said.
When deputies entered the cell, Bexar County Assistant District Attorney Raul Jordan said, they found Wise with severe facial and head injuries and Buckley on one of the beds in the cell. Buckley had socks over his hands, according to officials.
"Buckley does not have a scratch on him, and Wise was beaten to death and had no defense wounds," Jordan told the jury. "He ambushed him and he beat him to a bloody pulp and killed him."
In his opening statement, defense attorney Cleophus Marshall told jurors that Buckley and Wise were the only people who knew what really happened in that cell. Because there were no witnesses, prosecutors will not be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Buckley is guilty of killing Wise, he said.
At one of Buckley's court appearances leading up to trial, Marshall questioned the men's pairing in the same cell. Buckley is Black and authorities had said Wise was a former member of the Aryan Brotherhood, a neo-Nazi prison gang.
At the time of Wise's death, Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said that there were no known conflicts between the two men and "nothing showed up" that indicated the men were not compatible cellmates.
In video captured by the Bexar County Sheriff's Office Special Emergency Response Team, five or six officers converged at the door of the cell after blood was seen seeping under the door.
When they went inside, Buckley was lying on one of the beds in the cell with, said Jesus Ramirez, a former Bexar County detention officer who now works for the Shavano Park Police Department. Ramirez described the look on Buckley's face as "a thousand yard stare."
Buckley did not engage with officers, who handcuffed him and left him on the bed as they gave Wise medical attention.
Before Wednesday's opening statements, Buckley told state District Judge Benjamin Robertson that he was pleading not guilty by reason of insanity.
Court records indicate Buckley has been evaluated for competency and sanity issues over the past several years, which have delayed his court proceedings.
Jordan told the jury that they would hear experts establish that Buckley is competent to stand trial.
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This article originally published at 'Beat him to a bloody pulp': Trial starts for man accused of killing cellmate.