Jury selection is underway in Bexar County for the capital murder trial of a man accused of stomping his cellmate to death inside the county jail more than seven years ago. Shandrick Buckley, who was already jailed on a 2017 murder charge at the time, is accused of killing 29-year-old Alexander Wise inside the Bexar County Adult Detention Center in 2019. Testimony is expected to begin once a jury is seated from a pool of roughly 100 prospective jurors called for the case.
According to KSAT, Buckley was originally arrested in September 2017 after allegedly stomping a man to death near downtown San Antonio railroad tracks close to the Haven for Hope shelter, as reported by the San Antonio Express-News. That earlier murder charge is what kept him locked up at the Bexar County Jail when Wise was killed on May 30, 2019. Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar has said Wise was a former member of the white supremacist Aryan Brotherhood gang, a detail that would later shape the defense's arguments over how the two men ended up sharing a cell.
How Two Violent Inmates Landed in the Same Cell
Jail staff placed Buckley and Wise together under what is known as Emergency Management Intensive Supervision after both men were involved in separate altercations earlier that same day, per a report from KSAT at the time. Deputies discovered the assault after noticing blood flowing underneath the cell door; they found Wise unconscious with severe head injuries while Buckley appeared to be asleep on a bunk, the outlet reported. Wise was being held on property and drug charges at the time, including theft, possession of a controlled substance, and credit card abuse, a stark contrast to Buckley's history of alleged lethal violence.
The pairing prompted swift institutional fallout. Following the killing, the Bexar County Sheriff's Office reassigned three classification unit personnel, including two supervisors, while internal affairs and the Texas Rangers launched separate investigations into how the housing decision was made. That kind of outside review is required under the Sandra Bland Act, a Texas law enacted in 2017 that mandates an independent criminal investigation and state notification following any in-custody death in a county jail — a framework Hoodline has detailed in its coverage of other Bexar County jail deaths, including a trespass arrest that turned tragic.
Defense Raised Racial and Gang Concerns
In court proceedings weeks after the killing, Buckley's defense attorney raised concerns about the decision to house an African American inmate in the same cell as a former Aryan Brotherhood member, according to KSAT's 2019 reporting. Whether racial tensions played an explicit role in the attack remains an open question that could surface during trial testimony, along with exactly how long the assault lasted before deputies noticed the blood under the door.
The killing also came amid broader scrutiny of jail oversight. Weeks before Wise was killed, the Texas Commission on Jail Standards had cited the Bexar County Jail for noncompliance after finding that a detention deputy had forged inmate cell check logs following a separate custodial death, the same KSAT investigation found. Bexar County's jail has faced continued state and public scrutiny over inmate deaths in the years since, a pattern Hoodline has tracked through cases such as an apparent suicide probed by officials and a death following a hospital transfer.
Years of Competency Proceedings Delayed Prosecution
The gap between the 2019 killing and this week's trial stems largely from Buckley's mental competency. A court-appointed doctor initially found him competent to stand trial in August 2019, but subsequent competency proceedings suspended the prosecution for years. Buckley was later found incompetent to stand trial before eventually being returned to Bexar County after his competency was restored in 2024.
Under Texas Penal Code Section 19.03(a)(6), a homicide is elevated to capital murder if the accused commits murder while incarcerated for a prior murder or capital murder charge, according to FindLaw. That statute is why Buckley now faces an automatic sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole if convicted. How his defense team approaches his mental state and competency history during the proceedings remains to be seen as testimony gets underway.
