Family of murder victim asks judge to resentence man

Relatives upset with two-year plea agreement in murder case

By Juan A. Lozano

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Saturday, May 29, 2004

HOUSTON -- Claiming their rights as crime victims were violated, relatives of a slain man asked a judge Friday to resentence the killer, who was ordered to serve two years in prison as part of a plea deal.

Fehmi Halili, 28, was fatally shot in August 1995 in Galveston County.

After fleeing the country and returning, Haki Danaj was arrested in November 2002. Danaj, a legal resident from Albania, was an employee of the victim's company.

In a March 1 plea deal with the office of Galveston County District Attorney Kurt Sistrunk, Danaj was sentenced to two years in prison for manslaughter. He was given credit for time served and released from prison on March 29.

Danaj's mandatory parole was revoked in April after he was arrested for loitering in front of a preschool. He is set to be released from a prison in Beeville on July 9.

The plea agreement was accepted by state District Judge Susan Criss in Galveston, about 50 miles southeast of Houston.

At a news conference Friday in Houston, Halili's relatives and a lawyer said Sistrunk's office violated the family's rights as crime victims -- rights that are part of the state constitution and the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure.

Lisa Halili, the victim's sister-in-law, said Sistrunk never gave her family the chance to provide the court with important information about the crime through a victim impact statement before the plea agreement was accepted and the sentence imposed. She also said her family believes Sistrunk misled them in saying the case would be tried.

If the victim impact statement would have been given before sentencing "as Texas statute states, we honestly believe Judge Criss would not have allowed this defendant to walk out of her courtroom with a two-year sentence for murder," Lisa Halili said.

Because the victims' rights were violated, the sentence that Danaj received as part of the plea agreement is illegal, said Dianne Clements, president of the Houston-based crime victims group Justice for All.

"A defendant who is sentenced illegally has no expectation of a finality in their sentence," she said.

Sistrunk did not return a telephone call late Friday from The Associated Press seeking comment.

Clements and Lisa Halili's lawyer, Richard Martini, said they believe no crime victim's family in Texas has filed a similar court brief before.

Criss said she could not comment on the case because it is still pending.

In a May 4 letter to Martini and the Galveston County district attorney's office, Criss wrote that Texas law does recognize the rights of crime victims to be informed of what happens in criminal prosecutions and to express how their lives have been affected.

"Texas law does not recognize the right of criminal victims to legally contest verdicts or plea bargain settlements or dispositions," Criss wrote. "There is no provision in Texas law for criminal victims to file appeals in criminal cases. I am concerned that Ms. Halili may have been given false hope about her rights and remedies under Texas law."

Obviously cases like this pose a danger to the public relations efforts of a prosecutor's office. But the constitution seems pretty clear: "A victim or guardian or legal representative of a victim . . . does not have standing . . . to contest the disposition of any charge." Art. I, sec. 30 (e). I guess the only surprising thing is that this sort of problem has not arisen many times since 1989.