Thread: Photo of drug suspect in sombrero wins him freedom

Photo of drug suspect in sombrero wins him freedom


The Associated Press


RALEIGH, N.C. | A Mexican native jailed on a drug charge was offered a plea deal because a Raleigh-based federal drug agent made him wear a sombrero and hold a Mexican flag for a photo.

Jorge Hernandez-Villalvazo, a native of Mexico with a permanent U.S. residency, was arrested in April 2005 on a charge of conspiring to traffic cocaine. The photo from that year shows him wearing a sombrero and holding the flag.

When it surfaced during a pretrial hearing last week, prosecutors offered a plea deal that avoided a trial and freed Hernandez-Villalvazo from the Wake County Jail, where he'd been since his arrest.

Defense attorney Jeff Cutler called the photo "the driving force behind that plea deal."

"They humiliated him," Cutler said.

Wake District Attorney Colon Willoughby called taking the photo a mistake that shouldn't have happened.

Hernandez-Villalvazo pleaded guilty under an Alford agreement, which allows suspects to avoid admitting they committed a crime.

Cutler said Hernandez-Villalvazo told him about the photo shortly after he was arrested, but the attorney said he was dubious. He recently asked investigators about the claim.

Under North Carolina's open discovery law, which is intended to allow defense attorneys to see all evidence, the photo should have been shared long before last week's hearing, said Thomas Maher, director of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, a nonprofit law firm in Durham.

Willoughby said the lead prosecutor in the case didn't know about the photograph until last week, and that it was taken by a Drug Enforcement Administration agent assisting in Hernandez-Villalvazo's arrest, not by the primary DEA investigator.

The DEA would not identify the agent or make the photo public. An agency spokeswoman in Atlanta said officials are looking into the incident.

The investigation, which involved the Wake County Sheriff's Office and relied on court-ordered wiretaps of several phone lines, resulted in seven arrests.

No cocaine was ever seized from Hernandez-Villalvazo, who at the time of his arrest lived in the Zebulon area, east of Raleigh, where he bought cars and took them to Mexico to sell, Cutler said. Hernandez-Villalvazo had rejected a previous plea deal for a three- to four-year prison sentence because he was innocent, his attorney said.

Court documents show that two others arrested in the case have pleaded guilty and are willing to testify, while three suspects remain in the Wake County Jail awaiting trials. Another suspect was released and is awaiting trial, though his attorney believes he returned to Mexico.

Cutler said Hernandez-Villalvazo, who declined to comment, also plans to return to Mexico.

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Information from: The News & Observer, http://www.newsobserver.com
http://www.wilmingtonstar.com/apps/pbcs ... /705101376

Cutler said Hernandez-Villalvazo, who declined to comment, also plans to return to Mexico.

All's well that ends well

Just because he was "humilated" they let him go? I guess we need to be nice to all these poor drug smugglers. Let's give them all hugs and kisses and let them know they didn't do anything wrong and bothering them was racist.

And the last time I checked wearing a hat and holding the flag of one's country of citizenship isn't humilating. They should have given this dirty drug smuggler scumbag some real humiliation.