Thread: Durham, NC Illegal Alien on trial for MS-13 driven murder

By BRIANNE DOPART : The Herald-Sun
bdopart@heraldsun.com
Oct 10, 2007 : 12:26 am ET

DURHAM -- It wasn't long after police found 26-year-old Chanda Brown Mwicigi's bloody body on a sidewalk outside the Palm Park Apartments in the summer of 2004 that 19-year-old alleged MS-13 gang member Franklin Manacer-Herrera confessed his alleged role in her brutal slaying.

But Manacer-Herrera, according to his attorneys, wasn't confessing to a crime he had committed. Instead, the accused murderer and illegal immigrant, whose attorneys say is mentally retarded with an IQ below 99 percent of the U.S. population, was telling authorities out of fear, ignorance and "what he thought was necessity," the confession he thought they wanted to hear.

Opening arguments in Manacer-Herrera's first-degree murder case began on Tuesday afternoon after jury selection was completed. The defense elected to dismiss one juror who had strong opinions on illegal immigration.

Manacer-Herrera is a Honduran national in the U.S. illegally.

As attorneys made their opening statements Tuesday afternoon in a trial that is expected to last about a week, Manacer-Herrera, now 22, sat in the courtroom with his head bowed and shoulders slouched, listening as a court-appointed translator interpreted what was going on.

Manacer-Herrera faces life in prison if found guilty in the vicious stabbing death of Mwicigi, a reputed prostitute with whom the state alleges Manacer-Herrera had sex before stabbing her 41 times.

In his opening statement, Assistant District Attorney Jim Dornfried described Mwicigi's brutal death at what he said were Manacer-Herrera's hands.

When, early on the morning of Aug. 29, a Palm Park resident spotted the gory site of Mwicigi's bloodied body on a sidewalk of the apartments, the victim's pants had been pulled down around her ankles and her shirt pulled up above her stomach, Dornfried said.

Mwicigi's nose had been broken and her face bore the imprint of a boot investigators would later determine belonged to Manacer-Herrera, the prosecutor said.

Dornfried promised jurors he would present DNA evidence linking Manacer-Herrera to the murder weapon and to the apartment in which the stabbing began.

But that evidence, according to Manacer-Herrera's lead attorney Robert Trenkle's opening argument, doesn't pose a conflict with his defense.

Manacer-Herrera's attorneys said they plan to argue that it was two other men who committed the murder, bullied the defendant into participating and then intimidated him into covering up for them.

Trenkle said his client has the mind of a 7-year-old and mistakenly believed that Mara Salvatrucha 13 -- or MS-13 -- was a group of people who "protect Hondurans" rather than a highly violent street gang.

In 2006, Manacer-Herrera pleaded guilty to "malicious conduct by a prisoner" for shoving and spitting on a detention officer in the Durham County Jail.

http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-888166.cfm

Oct 20, 2007 03:10 AM
Honduran migrant guilty in stabbing
From Staff Reports
DURHAM - A jury convicted an illegal Honduran immigrant Friday of killing a woman who was stabbed more than 40 times.
Franklin Manacer-Herrera was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison for the 2004 slaying of 26-year-old Chandra Brown Mwicigi.

The victim was stabbed repeatedly inside an apartment on Broad Street, according to investigators, and then dragged outside and left on the sidewalk. The knife wounds left on the woman appeared to be a symbol of a Latin gang known for its violence, investigators added.

Jurors deliberated for slightly more than a day after a trial that lasted two weeks in Durham County Superior Court.

The prosecution argued that Manacer-Herrera was a member of MS-13. Defense lawyers said the allegations were not true.

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/743341.html