LOS ANGELES -- Prosecutors in the trial of three Mexicans accused of helping to murder a U.S. narcotics agent 'twisted and perverted' the facts in an unprecedented show of corruption, a defense lawyer said Monday.
Summing up the eight-week trial for federal court jurors, lawyer Michael Pancer said prosecutors became 'magicians and flim-flam artists,' putting on testimony they knew was untrue in a bid to convict Rene Verdugo Urquidez.
Verdugo, 36, an admitted marijuana trafficker from Mexicali, and Raul Lopez Alvarez, 28, a former Mexican police officer, are accused of participating directly in the February 1985 torture-murder of Enrique Camarena and his pilot, Alfredo Zavala Avelar near Guadalajara, Mexico.
Jesus Felix Gutierrez, 38, a confessed cocaine dealer who ran a seafood business in East Los Angeles, also is on trial, accused of helping reputed drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, the purported mastermind of the killings, flee to Costa Rica.
'There has been so little regard for the facts in this case by the government that it's embarrassing. It's insulting,' Pancer said. 'Are (prosecutors) being magicians and flim-flam artists?
'It's difficult, on behalf of Rene Verdugo, not to get angry when I'm talking about what the government is doing. ... They have twisted and perverted the evidence and misargued it at every opportunity.'
Verdugo, Lopez and Felix are the only three in American custody of nine men indicted in Camarena's death. Caro Quintero and four others are jailed in Mexico. One man was killed in a shootout with Mexican police.
Verdugo's lawyers admitted he was at Caro Quintero's Guadalajara house at about the time Camarena and Zavala were being tortured and killed there, but denied involvement in it.
Pancer accused the government of unprecedented corruption in trying to convict Verdugo. He said the most outrageous thing the prosecutors did involved the testimony of Manuel Calderon, a witness who testified he saw Verdugo and Felix together twice.
Calderon, who testified he was wanted for two murders in Mexico, identified Verdugo's picture with certainty only after the government repeatedly showed him photos, including one extra-large picture of Verdugo wearing the clothes he wears to court, Pancer said.
'It's outrageous,' Pancer said. 'If a defense attorney did that, if a defense investigator did that, we could go to jail. That's tampering with a witness. That's obstruction of justice. ... It has never happened in a courtroom before, never.'
