Emergency? Call Now The short answer. On November 10, 2025, after a month-long trial in Bexar County, a jury acquitted three former San Antonio police officers of every charge arising from the June 2023 shooting death of Melissa Perez. Eleazar Alejandro and Alfred Flores had been charged with murder, aggravated assault and deadly conduct. Nathaniel Villalobos had been charged with aggravated assault and deadly conduct. The jury began deliberating at 1:17 p.m. and returned not-guilty verdicts roughly ninety minutes later. I represented Eleazar Alejandro.
The defense of a police officer charged with murder does not begin at closing argument. It begins the first time somebody asks whether the investigation that produced the charge was done properly.
From the pretrial hearings through the last day of trial, our defense challenged two things at once: the State’s theory of the shooting, and the police investigation that produced the prosecution in the first place. This page is an account of that, with the contemporaneous news coverage cited so that anyone can check it.
Questions about the investigation, months before trial
In May 2025, District Judge Ron Rangel ordered the San Antonio Police Department to turn over additional investigative material the defense had been seeking. I described the investigation to the San Antonio Express-News as slipshod, and told the paper:
“We think there is more that SAPD can provide because we think that a lot of the actions they took are inconsistent with their own manuals.”
That is an ordinary sentence and it carried most of the case. An agency writes its own manual. The manual states how an officer-involved shooting is to be investigated. When the investigation departs from the agency’s own written standard, that is not a defense lawyer’s opinion. It is a document, and documents can be put in front of a jury.
The federal ruling we wanted the jury to hear
By October 2025, immediately before trial, a federal judge had already reviewed the video evidence in the related civil case and dismissed it. We asked the court to let the jury consider that ruling. At the pretrial hearing on October 8, I put the argument this way:
“It would be a complete miscarriage of justice if these men were convicted after a federal judge looked at the videos and found there was reasonable action to dismiss.”
Reasonable minds differ about how much of a civil ruling belongs in front of a criminal jury, and courts draw that line carefully. The point of the argument was simpler than the evidentiary question. The same footage had already been examined by a federal judge, and that judge had not seen what the State said was there.
“They had a right”
When the trial began, the defense put the jury inside the moment rather than inside the aftermath. That is the whole of a police use-of-force defense: what did these officers know, see and perceive as it was happening, not what a room full of people learned in the eighteen months afterward.
In opening statement I told the jury the officers
“had a right not to have June 23, 2023, be the end of any of their watches.”
Melissa Perez had already thrown a heavy object at an officer. She later approached with a hammer. The defense position was that what the officers faced in those seconds was an immediate deadly threat, and that the law asks what a reasonable officer in that position perceived, not what a reviewer concludes with the freedom to stop the video.
Speaking out of both sides
As the evidence came in, a contradiction in the State’s case became available to us.
SAPD had obtained a search warrant. In the affidavit supporting it, the department itself characterized Perez’s conduct as aggravated assault on a peace officer. The State was prosecuting these officers through that same agency while distancing itself from that agency’s own contemporaneous account of the events. As I argued to the court on October 21:
“The prosecuting agency is the San Antonio Police Department … saying that it was an aggravated assault on a peace officer … the state’s speaking out of both sides of their mouth.”
The court admitted the affidavit and the search warrant with an instruction that they came in to rebut the State’s argument, not as proof of the matters asserted in them. That is the correct limit and we asked for nothing more. A jury that has been shown one sworn document from the investigating agency will read the rest of that agency’s work differently.
The investigation becomes the defense
After the State rested, the quality of the investigation was no longer a side issue. It was the case.
Bexar County had never before charged on-duty San Antonio police officers with murder. Three were charged at once. The lead investigator assigned to it had never investigated an officer-involved shooting. I told the Express-News:
“We have never in this county had on-duty San Antonio police officers charged with murder, now we have three, so who do they decide to put on the case? Someone with absolutely no experience with an officer-involved shooting.”
The defense called former homicide investigators and police practices experts who examined how the case had been built, including whether all of the relevant body-camera footage and witness information had been considered before the arrest warrants were prepared.
I want to be careful about what that kind of testimony does. It does not prove a man innocent. It asks a different question, and it is the question the burden of proof exists to ask: if the work was done this way, how confident can anyone be in what it produced?
Closing argument
On November 10, 2025, the case reached closing arguments.
I returned to the investigation and to the detective who conducted it, telling the jury that the prospect of being investigated by him
“should be the three scariest words in the English language.”
I also asked the jury to consider what the prosecution had already cost three men who had not been convicted of anything. From the morning of the shooting forward, none of them had been able to return to an ordinary life. The investigation, the charges and the prosecution had followed them for more than two years, and no verdict gives that back.
The defense case rested substantially on forensic reconstruction and on use-of-force analysis. Forensic expert Angelos Leiloglou presented a three-dimensional reconstruction of the shooting. Criminologist Dr. Ron Martinelli testified to police use-of-force standards. Of that testimony I told the jury:
“Frankly, they were not touched by either one of these prosecutors.”
That was not showmanship. In a use-of-force case the reconstruction either survives cross-examination or it does not, and a jury watches to see whether anyone lays a glove on it.
The verdict
The jury began deliberating at 1:17 p.m. on November 10, 2025. About ninety minutes later it returned its verdicts.
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Former officer
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Charges submitted
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Verdict
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|---|---|---|
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Eleazar Alejandro
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Murder, aggravated assault, deadly conduct
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Not guilty on all counts
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Alfred Flores
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Murder, aggravated assault, deadly conduct
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Not guilty on all counts
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|
Nathaniel Villalobos
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Aggravated assault, deadly conduct
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Not guilty on all counts
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After the verdict the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office said it “respects the jury’s verdict and has no further comment.” The City of San Antonio noted that the civil litigation and the departmental disciplinary process are separate from the criminal case and would continue.
A consistent defense from beginning to end
The position did not change between the first pretrial motion and the last sentence of closing argument.
Examine what the officers actually faced. Examine what they reasonably perceived in the seconds they had. Examine how the investigation was conducted, against the agency’s own written standards. And require the State to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt, the same burden it carries in every case against every citizen.
That last one is worth saying plainly, because cases involving police officers tend to be discussed as though a different rule applies. It does not. The burden of proof is not a privilege extended to some accused people and withheld from others. Either it means the same thing in every courtroom in Bexar County or it means nothing anywhere.
About Mario Del Prado
I represented Eleazar Alejandro in this case. I have practiced criminal law in San Antonio for nearly four decades and I am a Board Certified Criminal Law Specialist, certified by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. Before I went into criminal defense I served in senior leadership at the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office, including as Chief of the Criminal Trial Division and Chief of the Major Crimes Division.
My practice as a Bexar County criminal defense attorney is concentrated in serious felony cases, including homicide and police use-of-force matters. If you are looking for a San Antonio criminal defense lawyer, or specifically for a San Antonio murder defense lawyer, you can read more about my background and certifications or call 210-663-3750. I answer my own phone.