Harris County prosecutors will not seek the death penalty against Lee Gilley, the capital murder suspect accused of strangling his pregnant wife before cutting off his ankle monitor and fleeing to Italy while out on bond.
In the punishment notice filed with the 497th District Court Friday, Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare stated that his office will not seek the death penalty against Gilley, writing that the decision is “irrevocably binding on Harris County District Attorney’s Office in perpetuity.” That language goes further than the informal assurances prosecutors had previously given Gilley’s defense team.
The notice comes as the Court of Appeal of Turin, where Gilley remains in custody, continues weighing whether to extradite him back to Harris County.
Italian judges have repeatedly pressed U.S. authorities for firmer written guarantees that Gilley would not face capital punishment if convicted, since Italy has no death penalty and its extradition treaty with the United States lets Italian courts refuse surrender in death penalty cases absent a binding assurance.
The filing states that during a September 14 status hearing, the court observed that a death penalty case ordinarily would have surfaced as an issue earlier, noting it “would have raised its head well before.”
Defense attorney Dick DeGuerin acknowledged to the court that the state had never been seeking the death penalty. Prosecutors wrote that the Italian court appears to have misread Texas law in its extradition review and said they notified the Court of Appeal of Turin of the state’s position through the U.S. government.
Gilley, 39, was accused in October 2024 of killing his wife at their home on Allston Street in the Houston Heights. He called EMS and reported that she had died by suicide, but hospital physicians and the Harris County medical examiner determined her injuries were consistent with strangulation, and court documents allege Gilley caused her death by applying pressure to her neck and upper back.
He posted a $1 million bond and was ordered to wear a GPS ankle monitor and remain in Texas.
In May, prosecutors say Gilley cut off the monitor and used forged documents to travel through Canada before arriving in Milan, where Italian authorities detained him carrying fake Belgian identification. He has since fought extradition from an Italian courtroom, telling the judge he is innocent.
DeGuerin has said Italian courts will not extradite a defendant facing the death penalty and may also decline to extradite someone facing life without parole, the only two sentences available under the capital murder charge Gilley faces.
In July, the Court of Appeal of Turin temporarily blocked the extradition request after a June email from a Harris County prosecutor to DeGuerin said her office would not put a formal death penalty waiver in writing, a practice she said it does not follow in any case. Italian judges cited that email as grounds to question the earlier assurances and asked whether Gilley could face a lesser charge or eventual release under a life sentence.
The case has moved through several more hearings since, including one in Turin the first week of September and another update around September 10 in which Italian judges said they were still not ready to move forward.
Harris County commissioners this month approved funding for around-the-clock ankle-monitor staffing, a step tied in part to the fallout from Gilley’s case and a similar tampering incident involving another murder defendant earlier this year.
It remains unclear when the Court of Appeal of Turin will rule on the extradition request or whether Friday’s filing satisfies the conditions Italian judges have laid out.
