By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
A woman charged with murder in the stabbing death of another woman will be allowed to remain free on bail as her case works its way through the court system, but she was ordered confined to her residence and must follow a list of other restrictions.
Amaya Cookie Diaz, 19, is one of three women arrested June 25 after a fight in which a 32-year-old woman, Caroline Pena, was stabbed. Pena died later the same day in a San Antonio hospital.
Diaz, her sister Kitty Mia Diaz, 21, and Kyandra Renee Faz, 22, were arrested by Del Rio police and charged with murder.
Bail of $5 million was initially set for each of the women. Faz and Kitty Diaz remain jailed, but Amaya Diaz was released from custody on Oct. 6 after her bail was reduced to $200,000 — $100,000 on the murder charge and $100,000 on a separate charge of tampering with evidence.
Amaya Diaz was in court Friday, Nov. 13, along with her legal team from the Far West Texas Regional Public Defenders Office in Del Rio. Lead attorney Paul Chambers and attorney F. David Ortiz represented Diaz, while District Attorney Suzanne West and Assistant District Attorney Daniel Esquivel represented the state.
The hearing was held in the second-floor courtroom of the Val Verde County Judicial Center on South Main Street. The hearing was in the 63rd Judicial District Court, with 63rd Judicial District Judge Roland Andrade presiding.
Courthouse security was tighter than normal, with more sheriff’s office deputies joining the deputies assigned to the courthouse as bailiffs.
Diaz and her defense team and West and her team entered the courtroom well in advance of the 10 a.m. hearing. Members of Caroline Pena’s family, including her grandmother and father, were seated in the gallery. Debbie Garcia, victim assistance coordinator for the district attorney’s office, sat with the Pena family. Members of Diaz’s family, including her father, also attended the hearing.
Diaz sat at the defense table beside Chambers, her back to the audience.
Minutes before the hearing was scheduled to begin, Chambers asked to speak with West and Esquivel outside the courtroom. Chambers’ co-counsel, Ortiz, joined them.
Chambers and the three other attorneys returned to the courtroom about 10 minutes later. Chambers spoke to Diaz for a few minutes, then all four attorneys left the courtroom to meet with Andrade in chambers.
About 10 minutes later, the attorneys returned to the courtroom. Chambers and Ortiz spoke to Diaz, while West spoke with members of Pena’s family.
Chambers, Ortiz, West and Esquivel went back into chambers to speak with the judge and reemerged some five minutes later.
Just after 11 a.m., it became obvious that no hearing would take place. The attorneys began gathering up paperwork, files and law books and returning them to briefcases and totes. A minute later, bailiffs escorted Diaz and her defense team out of the courtroom, while other bailiffs asked Pena family members to stay in their seats in the audience.
West spoke to this reporter before she and her team left the courthouse.
West said, “Once (Amaya Diaz’s) bond was lowered, which was not done by this court, but once the bond is lowered, we have a burden to prove there’s a reason it has to be raised.”
West said she had requested the hearing, noting, “That was to ask the judge to look at the bond conditions, mainly.”
“Usually, it’s standard that they have bond conditions. It wasn’t done (in Diaz’s case),” the district attorney added.
West said, “We would have liked to have argued to raise the bond back up, because it’s easier to say the bond as is, is reasonable. That’s 100 percent up to the judge. But once the bond has been lowered, then we have a higher burden, so that’s why we weren’t arguing to raise it (the bond amount), because then there’s an appellate issue, and it seemed unrealistic that that was going to happen.”
“It’s frustrating,” she admitted.
She said the conditions of Diaz’s release were the focus of the hearing and her conversations with Diaz’s attorneys.
West said, “Everybody agreed to that. The only issue that wasn’t agreed to was we wanted home monitoring, as in stay at home. The defense didn’t agree to that, but the judge ordered it anyway.”
West ticked off some of the major conditions of Diaz’s release: “Home confinement, electronic monitoring. She has to report to probation. She has to be drug tested. Obviously, non-contact, but she’s not supposed to be going anywhere. If she has to go somewhere, she has an emergency, or she has somewhere she has to be, she has to tell probation this is where I’m going and why, and it can’t be I’m going to go hang out at the mall.”
West added, “She’s at home, so she can only go if she has a reason to be somewhere, like a doctor’s appointment. She cannot be around town at all.”
West said Diaz is prohibited from drinking or using illegal drugs, possessing or using a firearm and having contact with convicted felons.
Also, West said, “No contact with the co-defendants (Kitty Diaz and Faz). No contact with the victim’s family or being 100 yards of where they are, and so, it’s almost like a protective order. If she was somewhere and they were there, it’s her responsibility to leave.”
Asked if she was satisfied with the outcome of the morning’s events, West said, “So the easy answer to that is, based on where we started, I’m satisfied that we got what legally was reasonable to get.”
Asked why Diaz, who has been identified in several previous proceedings in open court as the person who stabbed Pena, is out of jail while her two co-defendants, who police said did not stab Pena, are still behind bars, West said, “Because when the cases were indicted, the bond (on Amaya Diaz) was lowered without a hearing. So, the judge that made that determination, didn’t have a hearing to hear the facts.”
The writer can be reached at delriomagnoliafan@gmail.com.
