A Lubbock judge ordered a 71-year-old woman to spend at least three days in jail beginning Monday for disrupting the jury selection portion of the trial of a 35-year-old man accused of repeatedly sexually abusing a teenager.
H. Lee Burcato was booked into the Lubbock County Detention Center after she was held in contempt of court by 140th District Judge Douglas Freitag.
However, Freitag issued an order releasing her from the jail Tuesday morning.
A Lubbock County child abuse trial
Burcato was among 98 Lubbock County residents who were summoned to jury duty to hear the case against Jose Gonzalez, who is charged with continuous sexual abuse of a child. The charge is a first-degree felony that carries a punishment of 25 years to life in prison without parole.
Gonzalez, who has been held at the Lubbock County jail since March 13, is accused of sexually abusing a girl more than once between September 2024 and March 1, 2025.
His charge stems from a Lubbock police investigation that began on March 10 after a woman called police to report that Gonzalez had been raping her 12-year-old daughter for months.
The girl’s mother would tell investigators that she learned Gonzalez had given her daughter a sex toy and eventually confessed to having a sexual relationship with him for months while she was out of town. The girl also described Gonzalez’s genitals, according to court documents.
Meanwhile, Gonzalez reportedly went to the Lubbock police headquarters in the late hours of March 11 and confessed to raping the girl about 25 times between September 2024 and February 2025, according to court documents.
A disruption during the jury selection process
On Monday, the jury selection phase of the trial, also known as voir dire, began during which attorneys would make their presentations and interview potential jurors to assemble a panel of 12 people they believe would be fair and impartial.
Facts of a case aren’t disclosed during the voir dire process, though attorneys could bring up general concepts of an offense to weed out potential bias.
However, just as prosecutors began their presentation early on in the jury selection process, Burcato interrupted, saying she “did not want to listen to anything about child abuse,” court documents state.
Burcato’s outburst prompted a brief discussion at the bench between the Freitag and the attorneys after which the judge told the potential jurors that they wouldn’t be excused from jury duty just because they didn’t like the nature of the case.
Burcato, however, allegedly continued to object and told the court she wouldn’t listen to the presentations.
Freitag told her that she didn’t have to listen to the attorneys, but would still have to remain in court until she was cut from the panel. He warned her that further disruptions would result in him finding her in contempt of court and taken to jail.
Burcato, who was listed at potential juror #59, continued standing and told Freitag she would not listen despite his warning.
The judge found her in direct contempt of court and ordered her to be held at the Lubbock County Detention Center for 72 hours or until the end of the trial, whichever comes first.
However, Freitag issued on Tuesday an order reducing her sentence to one day in jail.
“The Court finds that the interests of justice have been served at this time and that with the jury selection having concluded, there is no longer a scenario whereby (Burcato) can further disrupt the jury selection process,” the new order states.
Meanwhile, a panel of seven men, five women and one alternate, was seleteced to hear the case.
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Potential juror jailed for contempt in Lubbock child sex abuse trial
Reporting by Gabriel Monte, Lubbock Avalanche-Journal / Lubbock Avalanche-Journal
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