Suspect in Vanessa Guillén’s killing pleads guilty

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The former girlfriend of the person accused of killing Army Spc. Vanessa Guillén in 2020 pleaded guilty Tuesday on fees linked with the homicide — closing a chapter in a saga that ignited a push to reform how the army handles sexual harassment inside its ranks.

Cecily Ann Aguilar, 24, the one dwelling suspect in Guillén’s killing, faces as much as 30 years in jail after pleading guilty to 3 counts of constructing a false assertion and one depend of accent after the actual fact, news station KWTX reported Tuesday.

Aguilar faces the potential for a $1 million wonderful and 12 years of supervised launch after she completes her sentence, in response to KWTX.

Army Spc. Aaron David Robinson shot and killed himself as police tried to arrest him in reference to Guillén’s homicide. Authorities imagine he killed Guillén after he had sexually harassed her. Aguilar was charged in reference to the homicide for allegedly serving to Robinson dismember and conceal Guillén’s physique.

“I comfort myself in knowing that she’ll be locked up for most of the rest of her life,” Mayra Guillén, Vanessa Guillén’s sister, told reporters outside of a federal courthouse in Waco after Aguilar entered her plea. “I hope she has time to sit and think about what it is that she did and how she impacted our lives.”

Guillén’s killing prompted nationwide outrage in addition to calls to reform the army justice system and handle sexual harassment and violence throughout the army. Guillén, who was 20 when she was killed two years in the past, twice reported being sexually harassed by Robinson earlier than he allegedly killed her. Guillén was discovered in a shallow grave close to Fort Hood. She had been bludgeoned to loss of life.

Last yr, Congress enacted a regulation — dubbed the “I Am Vanessa Guillén Act” — eradicating investigations into army sexual harassment and sexual assault from service members’ chain of command and providing them protections towards retaliation for reporting allegations, a part of a broader effort to provide commanders much less sway over army justice.

The army justice system usually operates in starkly other ways than the authorized system for civilians. A first-of-its-kind analysis by The Texas Tribune and ProPublica confirmed that, beneath a system managed by commanders, troopers in the Army accused of sexual assault have been lower than half as prone to be detained forward of trial than, for instance, drug offenses.