A Trump-appointed federal judge in South Texas this week dismissed a lawsuit filed by a woman in the Rio Grande Valley who alleged that her rights were violated after prosecutors charged her with murder in a controversial case that made global headlines after she self-induced an abortion.
Lizelle Gonzalez, who went by Herrera and was 26 years old at the time of her arrest in 2022, sought $1 million in federal damages in the 2024 suit after she was initially detained, arguing that she was wrongly arrested and accusing local officials of malicious prosecution and conspiracy.
According to federal court documents, Gonzalez was treated at a Starr County hospital in January 2022 following her effort to attempt an abortion. After she was discharged, a nurse reported her to local law enforcement.
The case garnered worldwide attention and occurred before the overturn of Roe v. Wade and Texas’ near total-ban on abortions, making the prosecution all the more concerning to some advocates. At that time, abortion was prohibited after roughly six weeks of pregnancy and Gonzalez was 19 weeks pregnant when she went to the local hospital following her effort to end her birth.
Texas law did not then, and still does not, allow charges to be brought against a pregnant person seeking an abortion. It does permit charges against medical providers or anyone who helps someone procure an abortion, which since 2022 has been a crime in the state.
Gonzalez went to the emergency room in January 2022 after taking Cytotec, known as misoprostol, to induce an abortion but because she was still registering a fetal heart rate, was sent home. She returned by ambulance the following day after complaining of abdominal pain and vaginal bleeding. By then, doctors said she no longer had any fetal cardiac activity and she was diagnosed with an “incomplete spontaneous abortion” before her stillborn baby was delivered through a cesarean section.
At some point after those visits, hospital workers told the district attorney’s office of the attempted abortion, who along with the sheriff’s office took their findings to a grand jury.
Gonzalez was arrested and spent two nights in jail. Her mugshot and name were broadcast across the world before Starr County District Attorney Gocha Allen Ramirez dropped the charges and acknowledged that it had been a “mistake”.
In an interview late Wednesday, Ramirez said that he felt “tremendously vindicated” by the judge’s decision.
“There was an apology made by me personally to her,” Ramirez said of Gonzalez. “Whether or not her rights were violated is a legal question and that legal question has been determined by a federal judge.”
Along with her American Civil Liberties Union lawyers, Gonzalez later accused Ramirez and his assistants as well as the sheriff’s office of wrongly arresting her and misleading grand jurors to indict her on that murder charge. The lawsuit alleged the prosecutors and sheriff’s deputies had waived long-standing protections for government workers when they misled the grand jury and wrongly prosecuted Gonzalez.
The Texas State Bar later disciplined Ramirez, a Democrat who represents the 229th judicial district that includes Starr, Duval and Hogg counties in South Texas, finding that he had committed professional misconduct. His legal license was briefly suspended although he continues as district attorney for the tri-county area.
In the 50-page opinion issued Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Drew B. Tipton, whom Trump appointed in 2020, the judge found that prosecutors as well as the sheriff’s office are protected by so-called “qualified immunity,” a long-established legal doctrine that shields many government workers from civil lawsuits when they are acting within their official duties. That was also the case in the 2022 Uvalde school shooting as well as many other such mass shootings in the state. Parents of victims have found it difficult to sue local, state and federal governments.
The district attorney’s office has scheduled a press conference addressing the case for Friday.
Ramirez, in brief remarks by phone Wednesday, repeatedly acknowledged that his office had made an error and that he regretted Gonzalez’s prosecution.
“I’m sincerely sorry it happened,” he said. “I understand that it was a terrible thing for her to go through.”
But he added that in the four years since, “I’ve received hate mail. I’ve received death threats. I’ve received threats on my family.”
Gonzalez and her attorneys from the ACLU did not immediately respond to requests for comment late Wednesday.
But in her initial arguments in the federal suit, Gonzalez argued that the “humiliation of a highly publicized indictment and arrest” has “permanently affected her standing in the community.”
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.
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