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Trial for man charged in 2021 death of wife ends in mistrial
Lee Cuellar, right, speaks with his attorney, Ahmad Assed, during the first day of his trial for first-degree murder on Wednesday. The case ended in a mistrial on Friday.
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The Bernalillo County District Attorney’s Office will look to retry a case involving an Iraqi War veteran charged with first-degree murder.
The trial of 44-year-old Lee Cuellar ended in a mistrial Friday because the defense did not review video evidence, which included its client’s statement to police, according to Nancy Laflin, 2nd Judicial District DA’s Office spokeswoman.
According to court records, a status conference has been scheduled for Wednesday morning at the UNM Adult Psychiatric Center, at which Laflin said the DA’s office will consider retrying the case.
Prosecutors say Cuellar, a former ROTC instructor at Kennedy Middle School, strangled his wife Rosalejandra Cisneros-Cuellar in the bedroom of their Southwest Albuquerque home in 2021.
Cuellar faced charges of first-degree murder and criminal sexual penetration.
According to a criminal complaint filed at Metropolitan Court, Cuellar told police on May 23, 2021, that he and Cisneros-Cuellar got into an argument because he thought she was a “demon.”
The complaint states he told police she was going to hurt his family in “malicious, mean, and nasty ways” so “he had to kill her.”
According to the complaint, he sat on top of Cisneros-Cuellar and strangled her with a tank top. To make sure she was dead, he turned her away and strangled her from behind with a different white shirt and a stick, which was used as a “tourniquet.”
Cuellar’s defense attorney Amy Williams told jurors last week that his “delusional state created a world in which he did not recognize the love of his life — his beloved wife.”
Williams said that after Cuellar retired from a 22-year career in the Army, he struggled to readjust to civilian life and was dealing with mental illness and post-traumatic stress disorder.
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“He didn’t recognize her,” Williams said. “Instead, he saw a malevolent force that he had to destroy. He saw it in her eyes that she was possessed.”
If convicted, Cuellar would have faced a mandatory sentence of life in prison.
