Luis G. Cabrera Jr. was convicted of three murders committed in two separate events in northern Delaware. In January 1995 Fundador Otero was killed, and Cabrera was convicted of that murder by a Superior Court jury in May 1998. In January 1996 Brandon Saunders and Vaughn Rowe were killed in Wilmington, and in February 2001 a second jury convicted him of two counts of murder in the first degree and other offenses. For the second case a judge imposed a death sentence in March 2002. It was affirmed in 2004, vacated in 2015, and replaced in January 2018 by two life sentences without parole.
His co-defendant in the Wilmington case, Luis Reyes, was tried separately, convicted of two counts of murder in the first degree and sentenced to death. Reyes's convictions were briefly overturned by a trial judge and then reinstated, and he too was ordered resentenced to life without parole. The two cases moved through the Delaware courts for more than twenty years, and their path follows the history of capital punishment in the state, from the reinstated sentence of the early 2000s to the ruling that struck down the statute in 2016.
Cabrera was born around 1970; he was 45 years old in 2015. Little about his early life has been made public. The first of the killings came in January 1995, when Fundador Otero was killed.
Cabrera brought Reyes into the events. Reyes, whose full name is Luis Eduardo Reyes, did not know Otero beforehand. The two men were later treated by the State as acting together, and Cabrera faced a conspiracy charge as well as the murder counts.
On May 29, 1998, a Superior Court jury in New Castle County convicted Cabrera of Intentional Murder First Degree, Felony Murder First Degree, Conspiracy First Degree and a further offense. At the penalty hearing, seven jurors recommended death and five recommended life imprisonment. The trial judge did not follow the recommendation. The court imposed two consecutive terms of life imprisonment without benefit of probation, parole or other reduction, together with additional terms for the other two offenses. The Delaware Supreme Court affirmed the conviction in 2000. In 2008 the Superior Court vacated the Felony Murder First Degree conviction, and the other convictions and sentences stayed in place.
Reyes was serving a twelve-year sentence for his part in the Otero murder.
Brandon Saunders and Vaughn Rowe were killed in Wilmington on January 20, 1996. Their ages have never been made public, and no motive was ever established. The deaths were treated as a double murder from the start.
Nearly four years passed before anyone was charged. The investigation changed course in March 1997, when police pursued the Otero case and obtained evidence that was later linked to the Wilmington deaths. By evidence of that kind, and through witness testimony, prosecutors tied Cabrera and Reyes to the January 1996 events. Both men were indicted on December 6, 1999. Cabrera was by then serving his life sentence for the Otero murder, so he was already in custody when the new charges came. The State sought the death penalty against both defendants, and their trials were severed.
Jury selection in the Superior Court began on January 9, 2001. Deliberations started on February 8. During them the jury reported that it was deadlocked, and the court gave it a supplemental instruction to continue its work. The verdict came on February 11, 2001: two counts of murder in the first degree, two counts of conspiracy in the first degree and other offenses.
The penalty hearing took place between February 13 and 15, 2001, and the jury recommended a death sentence for each murder. On March 14, 2002, the trial judge sentenced Cabrera to death. In the same proceeding Reyes was sentenced to death, after his own trial the previous year.
One matter from the trial returned in later years. A witness who had given testimony for the prosecution recanted it in July 2002, and trial counsel asked for a new trial. The Superior Court denied that motion on April 3, 2003. The witness repeated the recantation in a sworn statement in 2012. The courts did not accept it as grounds to set aside the convictions.
Reyes was convicted on October 19, 2001, of two counts of murder in the first degree. A further group of offenses was also found against him, including conspiracy in the second degree. On October 26, 2001, the jury recommended death by a vote of nine to three, and the judge imposed a death sentence. In 2003 the Delaware Supreme Court affirmed his convictions and sentence. It found no abuse of discretion in the limits placed on questioning of prospective jurors, in the evidentiary rulings, or in the refusal of a mistrial, and it held that the 1991 death penalty statute was constitutional as applied to him.
Cabrera's direct appeal was heard by the Delaware Supreme Court in two linked appeals. The second concerned his motion for a new trial on newly discovered evidence. On January 27, 2004, the court issued its decision. It reviewed five issues and wrote that it found "no reversible error," affirming the judgment of the trial court. The conviction and the death sentence stood. In reaching its decision on proportionality the court relied on its 2003 ruling in the case of Reyes. An execution date of June 4, 2004 was set, but on April 27, 2004 the court stayed it.
In November 2004 Cabrera filed a motion for postconviction relief under Superior Court Criminal Rule 61. The motion was later amended, and it took years to resolve because of events outside the control of counsel and the court. In 2008 the Superior Court rejected claims about juror conduct and refused ex parte interviews of jurors. Evidentiary hearings were held in October 2012 and April 2013.
The Superior Court's decision, in June 2015, was written by Judge Andrea L. Rocanelli. She found that trial counsel had been constitutionally ineffective at the penalty hearing. Counsel had relied on the mitigation work done for the Otero trial instead of carrying out new preparation, had prepared late, had presented the mitigation case mostly through a psychologist who was not well prepared, and had given the jury an inaccurate picture of Cabrera's childhood. The judge held that the proper remedy was to vacate the death sentence, and she did so. She denied the remaining claims, among them a claim about the defense's own use of peremptory challenges on racial grounds, which the court found deficient performance but without actual prejudice, and claims about residual doubt and about the evidence from the Otero case.
The State appealed the vacatur at first. Then, in 2016, the Delaware Supreme Court decided Rauf v. State and Powell v. State, ruling that the state's death penalty statute was unconstitutional and that the ruling applied to people already sentenced. The State dropped its cross-appeal.
Cabrera appealed the denial of his other claims. The appeal was argued on June 7, 2017, before the full Supreme Court, which consisted of Chief Justice Strine, Justices Valihura, Vaughn and Seitz, and a judge sitting by designation. On July 31, 2017, with the opinion revised and published on August 1, Justice Seitz wrote for the court that Cabrera had received a fair trial and that his counsel had not been constitutionally ineffective on the guilt phase claims. The court affirmed the Superior Court in full. Among the issues it rejected were the claim about jury strikes, the witness's recantation, the death qualification of jurors, the supplemental instruction given to the deadlocked jury, alleged failures to disclose evidence, and a request for further discovery and contact with jurors.
Reyes's own postconviction case took a different route. On January 27, 2016, the Superior Court, the same judge, set aside his convictions after questioning the legality and fairness of his trial. The State appealed. On January 19, 2017, the Delaware Supreme Court reversed that ruling, holding that the judge had erred in overturning the convictions, and reinstated them. Because the death penalty statute had been declared unconstitutional, it ordered Reyes resentenced to life without parole.
With the death penalty no longer available, the Superior Court resentenced Cabrera on Friday, January 19, 2018. The judge imposed two life sentences without parole for the murders of Brandon Saunders and Vaughn Rowe, and the convictions were affirmed. Cabrera then argued that the 2016 rulings had made the whole first-degree murder sentencing statute invalid, so that he should instead be sentenced for a class A felony under a different section of the code, with a possible term of 15 years to life, and that life without parole breached the Eighth Amendment and due process. On October 4, 2018, the Delaware Supreme Court, in an order by Justice Vaughn, rejected both arguments. It held that a person whose death sentence is vacated under Rauf and Powell must be resentenced to the alternative the legislature had specified, which is life without parole, and that a mandatory term of life without parole does not violate the Eighth Amendment or due process, following its decision in Zebroski v. State of 2018.
As a result, Cabrera is serving life sentences without parole in Delaware for the murder of Fundador Otero and for the murders of Brandon Saunders and Vaughn Rowe.
Delaware's first-degree murder sentencing statute is 11 Del. C. section 4209. In 2016 the Delaware Supreme Court held in Rauf v. State that the statute was unconstitutional, and in Powell v. State it applied that ruling to those already under sentence. Later decisions, including Zebroski v. State in 2018, held that a person whose death sentence is vacated under those rulings must be resentenced to the alternative the General Assembly specified, which is life without parole. The sentences of Cabrera and Reyes were among those affected.
In the Wilmington case Cabrera sought a new trial on the ground that a witness had recanted, and the courts denied relief in 2003 and again after the evidentiary hearings of 2012 and 2013. His claims about the jury process, about juror interviews and about discovery were also rejected. The one claim that succeeded concerned his lawyers' preparation at the penalty hearing, and it did not affect the verdicts. No motive for the Wilmington killings was ever made public, and the town where Otero was killed has never been reported.
January 1995: Fundador Otero is killed.
January 20, 1996: Brandon Saunders and Vaughn Rowe are killed in Wilmington.
March 1997: police inquiries in the Otero case produce evidence later linked to the Wilmington killings.
May 29, 1998: a Superior Court jury convicts Cabrera of Intentional Murder First Degree and other counts in the Otero case.
December 6, 1999: Cabrera and Luis Reyes are indicted for the Wilmington killings.
2000: the Delaware Supreme Court affirms the Otero conviction.
January 9, 2001: jury selection begins in Cabrera's Wilmington trial.
February 11, 2001: the jury convicts Cabrera of two counts of murder in the first degree and two counts of conspiracy in the first degree.
October 19, 2001: Reyes is convicted of two counts of murder in the first degree.
March 14, 2002: Cabrera and Reyes are sentenced to death.
2003: the Supreme Court affirms the conviction and death sentence of Reyes.
January 27, 2004: the Supreme Court affirms Cabrera's convictions and death sentence.
November 2004: Cabrera files for postconviction relief.
2008: the Felony Murder First Degree conviction in the Otero case is vacated.
June 2015: the Superior Court vacates Cabrera's death sentence.
2016: Rauf v. State and Powell v. State end the death penalty in Delaware.
January 19, 2017: the Supreme Court reinstates Reyes's convictions and orders resentencing to life without parole.
August 1, 2017: the Supreme Court affirms the denial of Cabrera's remaining postconviction claims.
January 19, 2018: Cabrera is sentenced to two life sentences without parole.
October 4, 2018: the Supreme Court rejects his claim to be resentenced under the class A felony statute.