Not sure how I feel about this, other than it’s another reminder of how old we all are.
Yolanda Saldívar, the woman found guilty of killing the late Tejano icon Selena Quintanilla-Perez, has applied for parole for 2025. The New York Post reports that inmates have indicated there is a “bounty on her head,” prompting the move to file for parole.
Saldívar, 64, was found guilty of the shooting death of Selena in 1995. Saldívar is eligible for parole after 30 years due to her clean record with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Quintanilla-Perez’s family is anticipated to be informed of her possible release in January.
According to reports, Saldívar is still targeted by other prisoners who still want “justice for Selena” despite having spent 30 years in prison at the Patrick L. O’Daniel Unit in Gatesville, Texas.
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Before her death on March 31, 1995, two weeks before her 24th birthday, Selena was dubbed the “Queen of Tejano” and was a dominating force in Spanish music set to expand her audience into the mainstream.
Selena had secretly met with Saldívar at a motel in Corpus Christi to obtain tax paperwork after Salazar was dismissed as president of Selena’s fan club for embezzling more than $30,000 in fan club dues. That same day, Selena was killed.
Following the murder, Saldívar withdrew to her pickup truck and engaged in a nearly 10-hour police standoff. Afterward, she claimed that she intended to turn herself over to authorities and that the shooting was an accident. However, Saldívar, a former nurse, did not contact 911 and did not attempt to save Selena’s life.
“I was convicted by public opinion even before my trial started,” Saldívar said in a prison interview for last year’s documentary Selena and Yolanda: The Secrets Between Them.
A jury convicted Saldívar of first-degree murder in October 1995 and she was given a life sentence with the possibility of release.
According to a relative of Saldívar, who spoke to the Post recently, the convicted murderer feels that she has paid her obligation to society and is a “political prisoner” in prison.
“Keeping her in prison isn’t going to do any good,” the relative said. “It’s time for her to get out.”
Thirty years, man. It’s hard not to wonder how big a cultural and musical force Selena could have been. I mean, the fact that someone like me, a white boy from New York who spoke no Spanish and only listened to rock music at the time, knew who she was in the pre-Internet of 1995 and was shocked by her death gives some idea of how big she was already. I’ve been perfectly happy for Saldivar to spend her days in obscurity in prison, not having to think about her. I’m not impressed by her claims of being a target – she’s still here, after all – or that she didn’t mean to kill Selena and was going to turn herself in. She’s gotten what she deserved.
But is it enough at this point, and is there any value to society in letting her out? She’s clearly not a danger to anyone, and we vastly over-punish people convicted of crimes in general. Most likely, she’d continue to be a little nobody outside of jail, though there’s a real chance she’d take up a bunch of offers to make money off of her notoriety, which I at least would find annoying. I think maybe where I land is that she should get parole, but not on her first try. Give it another year or two, to get past the 30-year retrospectives of her crime, and then process her out. What do you think?
VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN, LATINAS NO LESS
According to prevailing orthodoxy, everything has to be looked at through a gender, if not an intersexonality, lense.
So, here we have a real-life scenario of female-on-female violence, not to mention Latinx on Latinx. No better way to violate the dominant narrative. How can this be chalked it up to the patriarchy? Quite a challenge!
In term of criminal accountability processes, Saldívar couldn’t argue “he made me do it” and so she got her due. A female perpetrator of violence was held accountable.
That remarked, from a humanitarian nonfeminist perspective (human as in both sexes), 30 years seems enough punishment, but wouldn’t we have to say and do like for male murder convicts in keeping with the equal protection clause and the Texas Equal Rights Amendment?
Sex equality concerns aside, the argument about her becoming a victim of retaliatory violence does not persuade as an empirical proposition (risk assessment). Why? – Because there are many more potential assassins outside then inside and she surely won’t get free guards to defend her against inchoate threats. The argument does, of course, conform to the women-as-victim narrative. Even prospectively. Even in the case of a murderess.
Logically, she should be kept in prison for her own good.