Tejano star convicted of rape is released
Singer was found guilty of assaulting 13-year-old relative
The Grammy-winning Tejano singer convicted of raping a 13year-old relative was released from prison early Thursday and is now taking aim at winning a declaration of innocence.
Grupo Mazz co-founder and lead singer Jose “Joe” Lopez, who said he penned over 100 new songs in the more than a decade he spent in solitary confinement, has long protested his 2006 conviction for sexually assaulting his relative.
After more than a decade behind bars, he walked out of a Huntsville-area Walls Unit before 10 a.m. Thursday to greet his loved ones and supporters carrying a bag of belongings, a fan and a packet of papers.
Now, he’s hoping to keep fighting his conviction.
“The resolution that we will be hoping for is that he will be declared actually innocent,” his Lubbock-based attorney, Allison Clayton, said Wednesday.
The music star, now 68, was sentenced to 20 years in prison following allegations of a 2004 rape at the singer’s condo in Rancho Viejo, a town near Brownsville in South Texas.
In state custody
He served much of his time in a Brazoria County state prison and was held at the Goree Unit in Huntsville in the days before his release.
“His supporters are yelling and screaming he’s going to be free — but he’s not technically free,” said Andy Kahan, Houston’s victim advocate. “He’s still under state custody until 2026.”
The conditions of his release will include no contact with children, not visiting Harris County, registering as a sex offender and not using the internet, said Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Jeremy Desel.
“Only time will tell if he can fulfill the conditions of his parole,” Kahan said.
Before his release, Lopez was required to participate in a Sex Offender Education Program. At first, he was slated to take part in a four-month program. But after receiving more information the board switched Lopez to a nine-month program, according to attorneys.
The latter would have required him to admit wrongdoing, but TDCJ records show he was not made to complete the program before his release.
The Tejano star’s required program participation came after years of isolation, according to Houston-based parole attorney Bill Habern.
“He has had quite an interesting incarceration,” Habern said. “His notoriety required that he spend 10 years in administrative segregation for his own protection.”
Return to music unclear
Lopez still owns a recording studio, but it’s not clear whether he’ll return to music, according to Habern.
“I don’t know if conditions of parole will allow him to,” he said.
At the time of the incident, the teenage victim spent the school years in Baytown with her mother, but in the summers she lived with her father in the Brownsville area.
In February 2004, after the teen tried running away with her boyfriend, her father, who did not have an established residence, asked if the girl could live nearby with Lopez.
She testified she was assaulted one day after she stayed home sick from school.
“Don’t tell anyone or I’m going to have to kill myself,” she recalled him saying. Afterward, the girl told her mother and was flown back to the Houston area.
The case, and later appeals, were complicated by the fact that the teen wrote a note saying she wanted “35 million 2 say nothin happen.” She later told a court she’d penned the words at her father’s behest.
In court, Lopez alleged the girl fabricated the entire story in order to return to Baytown and see her boyfriend. But the jury, which during the punishment phase also heard testimony about two other alleged assaults, didn’t believe the singer and sentenced him on three different charges.