
Lizelle Gonzalez listens as a statement is read aloud by her lawyer Cecilia Garza during a press conference held in Garza’s office on April 2, 2024, in Edinburg, Texas (Joel Martinez/The Monitor via AP).
For the two nights she spent in a Texas jail after being wrongfully charged with murder for a self-induced abortion in 2022, Lizelle Gonzalez, 26, will be permitted to sue prosecutors and sheriffs in a lawsuit seeking $1 million in damages.
Gonzalez originally brought the claim in March, as Law&Crime reported, and named Starr County District Attorney Gocha Allen Ramirez, assistant DA Alexandria Barrera, and Starr County itself. For their “illegal and unconstitutional actions” against her, specifically, charging her in a bogus case only to dismiss it days later, Gonzalez said that she suffered humiliation and the violation of her civil rights.
Prosecutors tried to have the case thrown out but during a hearing in a Texas courtroom, according to the Associated Press, U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, would not oblige them.