Nogales,
Arizona Judge Thomas Fink, who has been critical in the past of the large
number of federal-origin criminal cases prosecuted in local courts, has now
begun rejecting prison-only plea deals for some defendants in drug busts made
by federal officers.
On Monday
at Santa Cruz County Superior Court, Fink rejected plea deals in three such
cases, though in one, the prosecutor quickly amended the agreement to make the
defendant eligible for probation.
Fink’s
calendar began with what was supposed to be a sentencing hearing for
37-year-old Joe Ramon Rodriguez Curiel of Sinaloa de Leyva, Mexico. He had
accepted a prison-only plea deal from the County Attorney’s Office after he was
busted in February by Border Patrol agents at the Interstate 19 checkpoint with
more than 18 pounds of methamphetamine hidden in his GMC Blazer.
Court
records show that the U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to take Rodriguez’s case,
at which point the Arizona Department of Public Safety presented it to the
Santa Cruz County Attorney’s Office, which accepted the prosecution. Rodriguez
ultimately pleaded guilty to a Class 4 felony offense that carries a 2.5-year
presumptive prison term, but that is generally probation-eligible as well. In
Rodriguez’s plea agreement, however, the latter option had been eliminated.
“The court
does not want its hands tied in connection with sentencing in this matter,”
Fink said. “This is a case of a declination by the U.S. Attorney’s Office of
what is essentially a federal case, so the court is going to reject the
sentencing provision of the plea.”
He
postponed the sentencing for one week.
“That will
allow the state and the defendant to either withdraw from the plea and/or
request a change of judge in this matter,” Fink said. “But the court will not
accept a plea in this case which has a stipulation to a sentence of
imprisonment.”
Fink
declined to comment on his posture toward prison-only plea deals in
federal-origin cases, but was outspoken during his 2014 campaign about the
federal arrests that are prosecuted in local courts. During one campaign debate
in Nogales, Fink estimated that as many as 50 percent of the cases at Santa
Cruz County Superior Court “are federal cases and should not be in our courts.”
In a second
case scheduled for sentencing Monday, Fink rejected the County Attorney’s plea
deal with 42-year-old Maria Santiago Quintero of Nogales, Sonora because it
called for a prison-only punishment.
“This is
another case that was declined by the federal government, the U.S. Attorney’s
Office,” he said. “The court is going to reject the sentencing provision in the
plea. The court does not believe it’s appropriate to tie the court’s hands in
sentencing in this matter to require a prison-only plea when this matter is a
federal declination of what is, in reality, and should be a federal case.”
Santiago
pleaded guilty to a Class 4 felony after she was caught Jan. 20 at the Dennis
DeConcini Port of Entry with 24.3 pounds of cocaine hidden in the dashboard of
her car. Her case file shows that U.S. Customs and Border Protection referred
her arrest to the HIDTA (High-Intensity Drug-Trafficking Area) Task Force, a
multi-agency organization led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The HIDTA
Task Force funnels federal arrests into the local court system through a grant
administered by the County Attorney’s Office. But while the grant supports law
enforcement efforts, it does not cover other associated costs, such as
court-appointed defense lawyers, detention and court staff such as
interpreters, clerks and judges.
The HIDTA
program has recently faced additional scrutiny for its focus on large cases at
the expense of local criminal activity, and because the feds plan to gradually
shift more financial burden to local partners such as Santa Cruz County.
Amended
plea
County
prosecutors at Monday’s hearing did not contest Fink’s decision to reject the
plea deals for Rodriguez or Santiago, but Santiago’s defense lawyer James
Miller appeared taken aback.
“One
moment, your honor,” Miller said. “I think I kind of missed something here.
You’re saying the court is rejecting the plea because it’s a prison-only plea,
because the federal government refused to prosecute this case?”
“Yes,
right,” Fink responded.
“On those
grounds, the court is declining the plea because the court wants discretion to
sentence this defendant… the court doesn’t want its hands tied to a prison-only
plea. Is that correct?” Miller asked.
“That’s correct,” Fink said.
Another
case set for sentencing Monday involved Luis Miguel Carrillo Sanchez, 28, of
Nogales, Sonora. He had also signed a prison-only plea agreement after he was
arrested April 1 for trying to drive an 80-pound load of marijuana into the
United States. This time, Deputy County Attorney Vanessa Cartwright told the
judge she wanted to present an oral motion to make the deal probation-eligible.
“I do believe
that a term of probation is appropriate with jail time,” Cartwright said,
requesting that Carrillo be given 120 days in jail with credit for the 94 days
he had already served.
Then, after
a tearful Carrillo told the judge through an interpreter that he was a family
man who had tried to smuggle the drugs to raise money for his brother’s battle
with a brain tumor, Fink sentenced him to three years of unsupervised probation
and 94 days in jail, with credit for 94 days already served.
“The court
is aware of the types of sentences that used to be imposed in federal court
when the U.S. Attorney actually accepted these kind of cases,” the judge said.
In cases involving similar amounts of marijuana and defendants like Carrillo
with no prior criminal history, those sentences would be about 90 days, he
said.
Later that
day Carrillo was released from the county jail into ICE custody for deportation
to Mexico, where he will begin serving his term of unsupervised probation.
Residents of Mexico are not eligible for the stricter options of supervised
probation or intensive probation supervision because county probation officers
cannot travel across the border to check on them – perhaps explaining why
prosecutors seek no-probation plea deals in cases like the ones heard Monday,
at least when they involve hard drugs.
County
Attorney George Silva said Fink’s stance won’t change his position on
prosecuting federal referrals.
“My office
has a responsibility to prosecute these cases regardless of whether or not
others in the criminal justice system are doing their jobs. Having a safe and healthy community is of
paramount importance to my office and the lack of prosecution or lenient
sentences or treatment encourages drug traffickers to use our community as
their playground at the expense of our residents and guests,” Silva wrote in an
email. “To ignore these crimes is to invite them. My office will continue to do
what is in the best interest of Santa Cruz County.”
If Silva’s
prosecutors decide to request a new judge in the cases of Rodriguez, Santiago
or others facing similar charges, the county’s other elected Superior Court
judge, Anna Montoya-Paez, was still showing a willingness to sentence federal
arrestees to prison for drug-smuggling convictions – at least as of May 16.
On that
date, she sentenced 20-year-old Francisco Javier Rodriguez Hernandez of
Nogales, Sonora to one year in prison for a Class 5 felony marijuana-smuggling
conviction, with credit for 80 days already served. Rodriguez had previously
signed a no-probation plea deal after Border Patrol agents arrested him and an
accomplice Feb. 28 as they tried to smuggle two bundles of marijuana weighing a
total of 91 pounds into the United States east of Nogales.
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