Story Created:
May 9, 2008 at 3:13 PM CDT
Story Updated:
May 9, 2008 at 3:13 PM CDT
PLAINVIEW, Texas (AP) - A former Texas guard charged in the death of an inmate whose head was rammed against a wall has pleaded no contest to manslaughter.
The Plainview Daily Herald reports 28-year-old Jose Rodriguez Junior was given the minimum sentence -- probation -- by a jury that said it would have acquitted him.
Rodriguez originally faced a 99-year sentence on a murder charge that prosecutors reduced to manslaughter.
After Rodriguez pleaded no contest this week, a jury gave him two years of probation on a second-degree felony charge that carried maximum 20 years in prison.
Rodriguez was accused of slamming 52-year-old Paul Ray Judia's head into a cell wall at the Formby Unit in November after the handcuffed inmate allegedly kicked him in the groin.
Judia died at a hospital three days later.
Judia was serving ten years for burglary.
(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
AP-NY-05-09-08 1527EDT
