Thread: Little-known Mexican law may help Oregon prosecutors

So far 22 comments at the source link.
~~~
Little-known Mexican law may help Oregon prosecutors
by Bryan Denson, The Oregonian
Saturday August 08, 2009, 7:44 PM

Accused killer Antonio Carrillo-Vera fled the town of Independence 13 years ago on a dead run for his native Mexico.

Polk County authorities accused him of gunning down his cousin in a spray of lead that also left a 2-year-old girl dead. They charged Carrillo-Vera with the slayings, a crime punishable by death, and the FBI swore out a warrant accusing him of fleeing to avoid prosecution.

But those efforts proved worthless in bringing Carrillo-Vera to justice. The FBI warrant? Serviceable only in the U.S. The chances of Mexico extraditing a prisoner who faces execution? Slim to none. Carrillo-Vera, safely south of the border, lived as a free man.

Investigators, frustrated by Carrillo-Vera's freedom, turned to a little-known provision of Mexico's federal penal code known as Article IV, which allows judges there to try citizens accused of crimes abroad.

Police across Oregon are coming to view Article IV as a powerful way to punish a new class of fugitive: Mexicans who kill in the United States and go home to hide. As Mexico's armed drug cartels put down roots here, causing a surge in violence, law enforcement officials say the foreign statute provides the swiftest, most decisive means of punishing killers who get away.

"It's the arm of justice reaching across the border," said Raul Ramirez, a former Marion County sheriff who filed several Article IV cases between 1985 and his retirement in 2007.

But Article IV cases are complicated and expensive. The foreign prosecution of Carrillo-Vera required Independence police to hire a translator -- one authorized by the Mexican government -- to convert case files into Spanish, a cost of almost $3,000.

Oregon and most other states lack a unified, coordinated means of helping police agencies bring murder suspects to justice in Mexico, said Ramirez, who got the ear of Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., on the subject about a year ago.

Wyden has drafted a bill that would streamline the filing of Article IV cases across the U.S. and provide money and other assistance to small towns, such as Independence, to file Article IVs. The bill also would create a new Justice Department position, director of foreign prosecution, a liaison to the nation's attorneys general.

"There's something very wrong when murderers, drug kingpins and violent criminals can come into Oregon, commit violent crimes, basically thumb their noses at the Oregon judicial system and go back across the border and live happily ever after," Wyden said in an interview.

Two killed in Independence
Investigators in Independence found a gruesome scene when they pulled up to the Oak Villa Apartments on the evening of Dec. 23, 1995.


Froylan Orozco-Carrillo, a 29-year-old legal immigrant from Mexico, lay dead behind the wheel of his Chevy Cavalier wagon. There were two bullet holes in his left cheek, another in his right hand. Detectives figured he put a hand up to defend himself.

One 9 mm slug had drilled through Orozco-Carrillo's flesh and hit his 2-year-old daughter, Lelianna, seated next to him, in the head. She died two days later.

Police learned that their suspect, Carrillo-Vera, had a long-running feud with the dead man. Witnesses told them the accused killer, about four years younger than his cousin, was infatuated with the victim's wife.

The murder weapon, a K.B.I. semiautomatic handgun, turned up at the home of Carrillo-Vera's brother in Salem. Police say two members of the suspect's family drove him as far as California before he fled to Mexico.

By March 1997, it was clear to Independence police that Carrillo-Vera wasn't coming back to the U.S. and that Mexico wouldn't extradite him, said Vernon Wells, the city's veteran police chief. So Wells boned up on Article IV prosecutions and, with the help of the California Department of Justice, sent Spanish translations of the case files to authorities in Mexico.

FBI agents searched fruitlessly for Carrillo-Vera in Mexico.

For 10 years, Independence police periodically reopened the Orozco-Carrillo killings as a cold-case investigation. It remained the only unsolved homicide since 1986 in the town of about 9,000 just west of Salem, Wells said.

At one point, investigators learned that their suspect might be traveling with a cousin named Jose Rosendo Carrillo-Padilla, who was wanted for a murder in Marion County. But they could find neither man. Carrillo-Padilla remains a fugitive.

Last December, Independence police discovered Carrillo-Vera had been jailed in the northern Mexico city of Zacotecas on their Article IV accusation. They believe a member of the Carrillo clan had turned him in.

"I understand he has been found guilty and they're waiting for sentencing," Wells said. "But they are in no hurry to pass sentence. So he may have a year or two before they give him a sentence."

Wells acknowledges that it's odd -- to him and to the victims' family -- to rely on a foreign government to punish Carrillo-Vera for a crime he's accused of committing in Oregon. But justice depended on it, he told The Oregonian.

"It's a matter of last resort."

'Last resort' saves taxpayers' money
Although police in Oregon would prefer to prosecute their own murder suspects, Mexico's willingness to try citizens for killings here saves taxpayers money, said Ramirez, the former Marion County sheriff.

"The cost of apprehension, the cost of incarceration, the cost of prosecution and then ultimately the long-term incarceration once they are convicted is all absorbed by the Mexican government," he said.

That's a ton of savings in death penalty cases, which can easily tally more than $1 million in the prosecution, defense and imprisonment of the guilty.

Though Article IV applies to all crimes, not just homicides, U.S. authorities have employed the Mexican statute almost exclusively to punish fugitive killers, Ramirez said. No one on this side of the border wants to overburden Mexico's criminal courts, he said.

"This is cooperation we're getting from the Mexican government," he said, "and that cooperation could cease at any time if we overwhelm them."

Wyden said he wishes his Article IV bill were unnecessary. But he pointed out that Mexico's reluctance to extradite killers facing the death penalty in the U.S. makes it imperative that law enforcement officials here get all the help they need to ensure justice is done south of the border. Also, he said, Oregon police are reporting a sharp rise in the crimes that cause Mexican nationals to flee.

"A Mexican gang member has now been accused of committing an execution-style killing in Salem, at Northgate Park, and he's believed to be in Mexico," Wyden said. "Through Article IV, he can be convicted and imprisoned in Mexico for a long time, if found guilty."

Police accuse Lorenzo Garcia Ceja, 17, of walking up to three young men in the park on May 26 and opening fire, killing 21-year-old Montez Bailey and wounding Skylar Hyland, 21, and Cameron Carolino, 20.

Wyden is expected to highlight those kinds of cases and the 1995 slayings in Independence when he formally announces his Article IV bill Monday at a news conference in the state Capitol.

www.oregonlive.com

Put Judge Sotomayor to work doing these cases. LOL

Does she speak and read Spanish? Very Interesting!

"But Article IV cases are complicated and expensive. The foreign prosecution of Carrillo-Vera required Independence police to hire a translator -- one authorized by the Mexican government -- to convert case files into Spanish, a cost of almost $3,000. "

Just the tip of the iceberg in what small communities are spending to defend themselves. We spend $27 Billion for border security in the DHS, alone.

Too bad mexico doesn't have a death penalty. This guy clearly deserves it.

Does she speak and read Spanish? Very Interesting!

I think she only reads "pigeon English". By that I mean she can only read laws written in English in such a manner as to make US citizens the pigeons.