Posted October 7, 2015 - 6:27pm

Judge sets low bail for accused drug mules stopped for 'driving while Hispanic'

By David Ferrara
Las Vegas Review-Journal


Clark County prosecutors are crying foul after a judge unilaterally declared that two reputed drug mules carrying $1 million in heroin were stopped by state troopers only because they were "driving while Hispanic,'' and let them out on unusually low bail.

One of the men has since vanished.

Prosecutors wanted bail set at $750,000 for Jezer Sal Garcia-Anzar and Kevin Allan Perez-Fabela, who now face the possibility of life in prison.

But Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Eric Goodman — the son of Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman and former mayor Oscar Goodman —questioned whether the defendants' constitutional rights had been violated and said the only reason a Nevada Highway Patrol officer pulled their car over was because the driver was Hispanic. The Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.

The judge denied Chief Deputy District Attorney Tina Talim's request to reconsider the bail Wednesday and noted "that it is not illegal to drive when the defendant is Hispanic," court records indicate.

Goodman set bail for the driver, Garcia-Anzar, at $40,000 and the passenger, Perez-Fabela, at $30,000. Both posted bail this weekend, before the prosecutor presented drug trafficking charges to a grand jury, which handed up a seven-count indictment.

"I don't believe judge Goodman had all the facts before him. I think he prejudged the evidence," Talim said. "I don't think he was correct."

At a District Court hearing on Wednesday, Chief Judge David Barker raised bail for Perez-Fabela to $300,000. Fabela, who appeared in court for the indictment return along with with lawyer Damian Sheets, was immediately taken into custody.

Barker then set bail for Garcia-Anzarat, the driver of the car, at $500,000. He issued a warrant for his arrest, but the man had already made bail and is nowhere to be found.

"It's a lot of narcotics," the judge said. "And we are a conduit city. We are a conduit to the rest of the nation with regard to this exact scenario."

The charges stem from a traffic stop around 9:30 p.m. Sept. 29. Garcia-Anzar was driving a Nissan Sentra with Illinois license plates north on Interstate 15 north of Las Vegas at about 10 mph below the speed limit, "impeding traffic," Trooper Albert Mermini noted in an arrest report.

The trooper noticed a bicycle rack attached to the car without a bicycle and the Sentra crossed "onto the fog line several times" as he followed. It's unclear why the absence of a bike was considered suspicious.

A records check showed that Garcia-Anzar had prior arrests for "Alien smuggling," the report stated. The trooper issued a warning about the traffic violations and the two men started walking back toward the car.

"I asked Garcia as he walked away if I could ask him a few questions," Mermini wrote. "Garcia turned around on his own free will and walked back towards me... I asked Garcia if I could search his car, and he responded 'yes.' I asked Garcia to sign a written consent to search form and he agreed."

A drug-sniffing dog later gave a "positive alert for the odor of an unknown controlled substance," and police found nearly 19 pounds of heroin stuffed in several packages in a hidden compartment built into the floor of the car.

Goodman could not be reached for comment Wednesday about why he set bail so low compared with the prosecutor's request.

A United States Supreme Court ruling handed down as recently as April addressed illegal searches.

"Absent reasonable suspicion, police extension of a traffic stop in order to conduct a dog sniff violates the Constitution's shield against unreasonable seizures," the high court ruled. "Authority for the seizure ends when tasks tied to the traffic infraction are — or reasonably should have been — completed. The Fourth Amendment may tolerate certain unrelated investigations that do not lengthen the roadside detention, but a traffic stop becomes unlawful if it is prolonged beyond the time reasonable required to complete the mission of issuing a warning ticket."

The prosecutor told Barker the car Garcia-Anzar and Perez-Fabela were riding was spotted traveling back and forth across the Mexican border just days before their arrest. She said that the search of Garcia-Anzar's vehicle was "a consensual encounter."

Both Garcia-Anzar and Perez-Fabela were born in the United States and had California ID cards, but have no apparent connections to Nevada, according to the prosecutor.

During the Justice Court hearing, Sheets did not ask Goodman to address the Constitutional issue. But the defense lawyer said later that "I didn't have to bring any legal issues up because the judge was astute enough to know to put those legal issues out there."

Sheets declined to say where the two men were headed when they were arrested, "but my client had a legitimate purpose for being in the vehicle."

Perez-Fabela had no way to know heroin was hidden in the vehicle, Sheets said.

http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/la...while-hispanic