Camarena Attorneys Make Their Last Pleas

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents seeking “vengeance” for the murder of fellow agent Enrique Camarena used overly zealous tactics in pursuing his killers and ensnared innocent men, defense lawyers charged in closing arguments Friday.

“The righteous desire for vengeance does not justify twisting the evidence and convicting by innuendo,” said lawyer Mary Kelly, who represents Juan Jose Bernabe Ramirez. Bernabe, who faces life in prison if convicted, is one of four men on trial in federal court for their alleged involvement in Camarena’s 1985 slaying.

In his rebuttal argument, Assistant U.S. Atty. Manuel A. Medrano accused defense lawyers of distorting the evidence in the case and trying to create “a smoke screen” by their charges against DEA agents.

“The conduct of DEA agents in this case always has been aboveboard,” Medrano declared. At another point, the prosecutor said “the DEA agents want the truth.”

After three days of closing arguments, which ended Friday afternoon, U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie told the six-man, six-woman jury that he would give them formal instructions Monday morning and then begin their deliberations.

Earlier Friday, Kelly told the jurors that the government had neglected to tell them that Bernabe had responded “No, no,” when an undercover DEA agent posing as a drug dealer had asked her client if he was present when Camarena was interrogated and tortured at a Guadalajara house in February, 1985.

She played an enhanced version of the tape and used a slide projector to show the transcript on a courtroom wall.

Referring to Operation Leyenda, the special DEA unit that has been investigating Camarena’s murder for five years, she told jurors: “I’m not saying they are bad people, but they see with Leyenda eyes and they hear with Leyenda ears.”

She and her co-counsel, Michael Meza, had an uphill battle. Bernabe, a one-time bodyguard for Mexican drug kingpin Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, who is now imprisoned in Mexico for his role in Camarena’s murder, boasted on secretly made videotapes that he had been at the house where Camarena was tortured and that he had helped Mexican drug kingpin Rafael Caro Quintero escape from the Guadalajara airport after Camarena was murdered.

Meza tried to explain this away by saying his client hadn’t really been at either place and fabricated this story in an attempt to con someone into paying him $10,000 for information he didn’t really have.

Medrano urged the jurors to review all the tape transcripts, saying that such a review would show that Bernabe was at the house and the airport and was guilty. He reminded the jurors there also had been eyewitness testimony that Bernabe helped Caro escape.

The prosecutor attacked the closing argument delivered Thursday by Edward Medvene, the attorney for defendant Ruben Zuno Arce.

Referring to 38 charts that Medvene had utilized in court in an attempt to demonstrate that his client was innocent, Medrano characterized the move as “one of the most overwhelming dog-and-pony shows I have ever seen in a courtroom.”

Martin R. Stolar, an attorney for defendant Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros, also attempted to persuade the jurors that DEA agents in their hunger for convictions had utilized a dubious operative who should have been indicted for Camarena’s murder rather than being put on the federal payroll.

He asserted that Antonio Garate Bustamante, a former commander with the Guadalajara riot police, should have been indicted because he participated in a December, 1984, meeting where plans to kill Camarena were discussed, according to a prosecution witness. Instead, Stolar said, Garate became “a government witness factory” and produced three key government witnesses in the trial, all of whom Stolar said were untrustworthy.

Prosecutor Medrano said Stolar had mischaracterized the testimony about the December, 1984, meeting and steadfastly maintained that the three witnesses were reliable and had held up on cross-examination.

He acknowledged that the government had relocated the three witnesses and their families from Mexico to the United States. He said this had to be done because if any of the three men returned to Mexico, they would be killed.

Medrano also contended that the funds spent by the DEA on the case were paltry compared to the billions in profits raked in by drug traffickers.

Medrano referred to Matta and Zuno as “the Lee Iacoccas of their (drug) corporation.” And he concluded his argument by quoting William Shakespeare on the subject of cowards.

In turn, Kelly, a veteran criminal defense lawyer, described a scene from the 1957 movie “Twelve Angry Men” in trying to hammer home to the jurors the meaning of the presumption of innocence. In the film, all the jurors except one, played by Henry Fonda, start their deliberations thinking the defendant is guilty.

At one point, an exasperated juror turns to Fonda and asks, “Why are you convinced he’s innocent?” Kelly told the jury that Fonda responded: “I’m not convinced he’s innocent; I’m just not convinced he’s guilty.”