Convicted Murderer Charged in Two New Texas Murders Offers to Return to Prison in Plea

A convicted murderer who was released early from a Texas prison in 1993 and now faces two new murder charges offered Thursday to enter a plea and return to prison for 50 years in exchange for avoiding going to trial and facing a possible death sentence — an offer that victims’ families urged prosecutors to reject.

Raul Meza Jr., 63, served about a decade in prison for killing an 8-year-old girl before he was released. He was charged last year with two other killings that happened in 2019 and 2023, and investigators have said they are looking into as many as a 10 other unsolved cases that they think might be connected to Meza.

During a pretrial hearing Thursday, Travis County prosecutors said they had just received the plea offer from Meza’s attorney and hadn’t had time yet to evaluate it. Meza’s lawyer, Russ Hunt, said the number of years in prison was the only term offered, and that there had been no discussion yet whether a deal would require Meza to plead guilty or no contest to the murder charges.

Read the source article at Associated Press