City Council votes to hire outside consultant to handle Daniel Villegas’ lawsuit

EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) -- The El Paso City Council approved hiring an outside consultant to handle a lawsuit filed by Daniel Villegas, an El Paso man who said he was forced to confess to the murder of two people in a drive-by shooting when he was 16-years-old in 1993.

In Tuesday's executive session, City Representative Art Fierro made the motion to approve the item. Rep. Deanna Maldonado-Rocha seconded the motion.

City Council voted yes 8-0 with all city representatives voting yes. Mayor Renard Johnson was absent.

Villegas filed a civil lawsuit against the city in December 2015. In the lawsuit, he claimed El Paso police's actions and policies "impaired his rights."

The lawsuit alleged the department's failure "to train its officers to exercise care an caution with juveniles"; failure to investigate and discipline officers for "threatening and physically harming juvenile suspects and violating juvenile policies"; and encouraging officers to clear the cases while tolerating dishonestly and not supervising officers.

Senior U.S. District Judge David Guaderrama dismissed the first two claims but ruled that Villegas can go forward with the the third claim.

Villegas was convicted in 1995 and sentenced to life in prison. He served 20 years in prison. That conviction was overturned in 2013. He was later acquitted in 2018.

ABC-7 reached out to Judge Guaderrama's court, which said Villegas' next court date is set for August 20.