Sunday, December 15, 2002
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

SPECIAL REPORT: RUNNING FOR THE BORDER

Mexican nationals can get away with the most heinous crimes in Las Vegas and elsewhere in the United States, so long as they make it back to their country before U.S. authorities catch up with them. Refusals to extradite such criminals have turned Mexico into a fugitives paradise.

Click on the images to enlarge. The Extradition Process: Click on the image for an enlargement. Chief Deputy District Attorney Frank Coumou says the United States is at the mercy of the Mexican government when it comes to extraditing suspects. Photo by Clint Karlsen. Anselmo Bernal-Garcia Silvano and Carlos Bracamontes Fernando Hernandez Pablo Guerrero and Eriberto "Eddie" Leon Ramiro "Diablo" Lopez Jose Martin Fredis Paiz Erasmo Pena Pedro Ponce Juvenal Sandoval Manuel Tarango Jr. Gonzalo Villalobos Luz Marcela Villanueva-Soto Documents involved in the extradition of murder suspect Luz Marcela Villanueva-Soto sit in boxes in the office of prosecutor Frank Coumou. Photo by Ralph Fountain.

When he finished strangling his ex-wife and mutilating her body with a butter knife, Fernando Hernandez put his little girl in a car and fled south at speeds topping 100 mph.

State troopers stopped him near Laughlin, and he was arrested and later sentenced to death. Upon interviewing his 3-year-old daughter, authorities learned where Fernandez was headed in such a hurry.

"Daddy was taking her to Mexico," a detective said Ana Hernandez told police.

There is no mystery why Hernandez and other natives of Mexico flee south after committing heinous crimes here.

For the wanted Mexican national, a successful run for the border often is akin to getting a get-out-of-jail-free card.

"You know the old adage about getting away with murder?" said Las Vegas police Lt. Wayne Petersen, former commander of the homicide unit. "Well, you sometimes can if you're a Mexican national and you make it across the border."

Local authorities say there are numerous outstanding cases in which Mexican suspects accused of attempted murder, rape, drug trafficking and a host of other crimes are believed to be living free south of the border.

More ominously, they cited at least 12 cases in as many years in which Mexican nationals charged in the deaths of Las Vegans have made it back home.

Among them are a boy accused of shooting to death his 14-year-old pregnant girlfriend; a man charged with killing a 7-Eleven clerk who refused to sell him beer; and two men suspected of gunning down a model with a double-barrel shotgun.

Of the dozen suspects:

• One is in custody in Mexico City, where she is fighting her extradition on a first-degree murder charge.

• Two enjoyed their freedom until they sneaked back into this country and were arrested by U.S. officials.

• Nine remain at large. Police say all are believed to be hiding south of the border.

The situation is not peculiar to those charged with crimes committed in Nevada.

The Mexican government only a few years ago began handing over its citizens when they face criminal charges in the United States. Even then, extradition occurred only under limited circumstances and after extensive judicial review.

But U.S. police and prosecutors say recent developments in Mexico have made it nearly impossible to extradite the worst criminals, making that country even more of a fugitives paradise.

Mexico long has refused to surrender its nationals when they faced the death penalty here, but a binding decision handed down by the Mexican Supreme Court last year has extended that same protection to those facing life sentences. The ruling has quashed hopes of extraditing hundreds of Mexicans facing murder charges in this country.

"What this will do is create in Mexico a cesspool of America's worst Mexican offenders," said Robert Locke, assistant chief of the extraditions unit in the San Diego County district attorney's office. "Justice is being prevented from happening in our communities because any Mexican facing a death sentence or life in prison will be kept down there. It's almost something you don't want to talk about because you don't want word of it spreading among criminals."

Clark County prosecutors are anxiously waiting to see if the decision derails their attempt to extradite a Las Vegas woman accused of orchestrating a murder-for-sex plot that ended a lesbian love triangle.

"We've got our fingers crossed," Chief Deputy District Attorney Frank Coumou said. "But we're really at the mercy of the Mexican government."

Hired killers

Luz Marcela Villanueva-Soto was angry after finding out her lover was leaving her for a woman Villanueva-Soto had dated for nearly six years.

Witnesses said Villanueva-Soto, 31, confronted her lover, Tzatzi Sanchez, at a Jan. 14, 2001, barbecue at Sanchez's southeast Las Vegas home and a heated argument ensued.

Villanueva-Soto left, the gathering broke up and Sanchez and her two male roommates retired for the night.

Early the next morning, two men broke into the home, tied up Sanchez's roommates, then grabbed Sanchez and took her to another room.

About an hour later, the roommates were able to untie themselves after hearing a vehicle drive away.

In the other room, they found the 27-year-old Sanchez bloody, naked and bound with a rag and her own hair.

"She died a slow and painful death," Coumou said. "She was strangled so hard that the blood vessels burst in her neck."

Homicide detectives theorized that Villanueva-Soto, in a jealous rage, hired the assailants to torture and kill Sanchez.

After more than a week of witness interviews and evidence collection, police arrested Luis Barroso, a 24-year-old man Villanueva-Soto worked with at a local packing plant, and his friend, Obed Marroquin, 27. Prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty at their trial.

"They never knew Sanchez," Coumou said. "(Villanueva-Soto) hired Barroso, and Marroquin was the accomplice. The offer from Soto was, 'You go and do this for me, and you can take whatever you want out of the house. I'll give you $3,000 and I'll sleep with you.' "

Police said Villanueva-Soto fled to her hometown in Durango, Mexico, before they could arrest her.

Coumou requested a provisional arrest warrant for Villanueva-Soto from the Mexican government, and Mexican police in July captured her there.

But such an arrest typically is only the first step in what is generally a years-long extradition process.

The complicated procedure requires that American prosecutors, working with federal prosecutors, prepare and ship what typically amounts to boxes full of paperwork south of the border.

The documents, which must be submitted in English and Spanish and carry the seal of the U.S. State Department, include a statement of the facts of the case, copies of all laws broken, copies of the statutes of limitation for the crimes, affidavits establishing the fugitive's identity, a certified arrest warrant, an indictment or criminal complaint, any grand jury transcripts and certified copies of the fugitive's previous convictions.

"It's really almost as much work as preparing for a trial," said Clark County prosecutor Owen Porterfield, who works in the unit that monitors extraditions.

In the five months since Villanueva-Soto's arrest, Coumou has jumped through each hoop and is hopeful that he will be able to return her to Las Vegas for trial.

But he acknowledges that 150 years of history, as well as recent court rulings in Mexico, indicate the deck isn't stacked in his favor.

Outlaw trail

For more than a century and a half, Mexico has been a favored destination for fugitives ranging from Old West gunslingers to modern drug lords.

The country was known for its endless hiding places and, for those who couldn't hide, a corrupt justice system where bribes easily bought favor with police, judges and jailers.

Extradition treaties between the two countries stretch back as far as the heyday of the Wild West outlaw, with President Lincoln signing the first one during the Civil War.

But through the years, the level of cooperation between the two countries in handing over fugitives has ebbed and flowed.

The current extradition agreement was enacted in 1980. Under it, Mexico generally surrenders most Americans sought by U.S. prosecutors.

But the treaty does not require either country to extradite its own nationals and, unlike the United States, Mexico until the mid-1990s refused to do so.

The country's resistance to extraditing its citizens to the United States is partially based on nationalism, experts on the Mexican legal system say.

But it also stems from distrust of the U.S. criminal justice system, which Mexico, like much of Europe, views as overly harsh in its sentencing.

In 1996, after years of complaints about the policy from U.S. law enforcement officials and crime victims' families, Mexico began extraditing some of its citizens under limited circumstances.

That year, the country surrendered a Mexican wanted in Arizona for child molestation and another wanted in Texas for ordering the murders of former members of his religious cult. The next year, no Mexican nationals were extradited to the United States. And in the four years since, an average of three have been surrendered annually.

In each of those cases, U.S. authorities had to assure the Mexican government that capital punishment would not be sought. Under Mexico's 1917 constitution, the death penalty is legal in cases of treason, but it has not been used since the 1950s.

The Mexican constitution emphasizes a philosophy that criminals should be rehabilitated, a goal that is impossible if someone is executed for his crimes.

But in a landmark one-page ruling on Oct. 2, 2001, the Mexican Supreme Court found that life sentences represent cruel and unusual punishment and also are inconsistent with the pursuit of rehabilitation.

"In a life sentence, it would be absurd to hope to rehabilitate the criminal if there will be no chance he will return to society," Justice Roman Palacios wrote.

The ruling jeopardized chances of ever extraditing scores of Mexican nationals believed to be hiding in their native country.

As of March, the Justice Department had nearly 1,700 open extradition cases in Latin America. About half of them involved fugitives in Mexico.

It is not clear just how many cases will be affected by the ruling.

Capital cases make up a tiny number of U.S. prosecutions. But cases that could result in a life sentence are much more common. In Nevada, the minimum sentence for murder is 20 years to life in prison. Other felonies, such as sexual assault and kidnapping, can carry life terms.

"Mexico kind of changed the rules, so it's gone from bad to worse since the October 2001 decision," said prosecutor Janice Maurizi, who heads the extraditions unit of the Los Angeles County district attorney's office.

It remains unclear whether Mexican courts will differentiate between sentences of life without possibility of parole and the more common life sentences that allow a convict eventually to be released. That distinction could make all the difference in determining whether Clark County prosecutors will be able to extradite Villanueva-Soto.

"There's a lot of uncertainty right now because, up here, life doesn't always mean life," said Locke, the San Diego prosecutor. "There are lots of very serious crimes where someone gets a life with parole and gets out in 20 or 30 years."

At the request of the Mexican government, Clark County prosecutor Coumou submitted affidavits promising he would not seek the death penalty or a life sentence in the Villanueva-Soto case.

But in recent cases, the Mexican government has found such assurances inadequate.

In a widely watched case earlier this year, California prosecutors tried to extradite Jesus Amezcua, a drug dealer known as "king of amphetamines."

A Mexican tribunal ruled in May that prosecutors' assurances they would not seek a life sentence were insufficient because a judge ultimately would decide Amezcua's sentence should he be convicted.

"Now they want judges to give assurances about sentencing, and that flies in the face of our entire legal system," said Maurizi, the Los Angeles prosecutor. "It's a legal impossibility. Judges can't rule on cases before they're presented evidence during trials."

Double jeopardy applies

Should Coumou's attempt to extradite Villanueva-Soto fail, she will automatically be tried in Mexico under a process referred to as an Article IV prosecution.

Article IV of the Mexican federal penal code permits a Mexican national to be prosecuted in his homeland for a crime committed outside the country.

"It's sort of Mexico's answer to our complaining when we can't extradite a Mexican national," Maurizi said. "They say, 'We'll try them here and make sure justice is served.' "

Article IV prosecutions preclude a person from later being tried for the same crime north of the border.

"If the judge acquits them in Mexico, the double jeopardy rule applies," Clark County District Attorney-elect David Roger said, referring to the U.S. Constitution's prohibition of trying a person twice for the same crime.

More than a dozen prosecutors in Nevada, California and Arizona who were interviewed for this story criticized Article IV as an ineffectual alternative to extradition.

"We have no confidence that something's actually going to happen down there," Clark County District Attorney Stewart Bell said. "The Mexican government has been fairly protective of its citizens, even when it's clear that that citizen committed a serious crime in the United States."

Prosecutors say part of the problem is the Mexican judicial system's fundamental differences in procedure from the U.S. system.

In an Article IV prosecution, a case is assigned to a prosecutor and defense attorney. They make their cases in written documents that are submitted to a judge who determines guilt or innocence and levies any sentence.

"They're only prosecuted by paper," said prosecutor Ben Graham, who oversees extradition cases for the Clark County district attorney's office. "It's not based on firsthand testimony. It's basically just based on documentary evidence. You don't send witnesses down there to testify. Victims' families don't get to participate, and that can make all the difference."

Additionally, it often is difficult or impossible for prosecutors to discover the status of Article IV cases.

"We can't track sentences and determine whether someone was found guilty, got prison time or what," said U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who has pushed for a solution to the Mexican extradition problem.

Maurizi said the Mexican government doesn't cooperate with prosecutors' inquiries about the cases.

"About six months ago, I sent demands to the Mexican government asking what happened to 97 Article IV cases that have seemingly disappeared from the justice system," Maurizi said. "Mexico has never responded. But from others we've talked to in unofficial channels, it's clear the vast majority of them are grossly inadequate sentences. Most of them, nothing happens."

That opinion is seconded by Val Jimenez, a law enforcement liaison to the Mexican government for the California attorney general's office. He commutes between Sacramento and Mexico City to monitor California's Article IV cases.

"During the 10 or 11 months I've been doing this, I can only remember one case where the guy actually got time," he said. "He got 20 years for doing a homicide, appealed and he was out in 18 months."

The risk of triggering an Article IV prosecution with an extradition attempt that is likely to fail has led some large district attorneys' offices, including Los Angeles County, to abandon even trying to extradite Mexican nationals.

"We'll wait for them to wander back across the border," Maurizi said.

States seek help

In a letter earlier this year to Attorney General John Ashcroft and Secretary of State Colin Powell, the attorneys general for all 50 states implored them to negotiate a remedy to the problem that "not only interferes with our sovereignty but also creates an unhealthy and dangerous incentive for people to commit grievous crimes and escape into Mexico."

In a similar appeal in June, a bipartisan majority of California's congressional delegation sent a letter to President Bush urging him to address the extradition issue with the Mexican government.

So far, there has been no action.

Officials at the U.S. Justice Department, which coordinates all American prosecutors' extradition requests, initially agreed to be interviewed for this story. That agreement was later rescinded, and the department was willing to provide only scant statistical information about extradition caseload.

"You're going to find this is a real contentious issue that people aren't willing to talk about," said Drew Wade, a Justice Department spokesman in Washington, D.C.

A half-dozen Mexican government officials contacted for this story refused to comment or did not respond to numerous requests for interviews.

Miguel Monterrubio, a representative for the Mexican Embassy in Washington, D.C., refused to respond on the record to specific questions regarding the country's current extradition policy. But he said banning life sentences is a natural progression in the country's justice system, which stresses humanitarian treatment of criminals.

Monterrubio also repeatedly emphasized the Mexican Supreme Court's sovereignty on creating criminal justice policy in that country and maintained that U.S. prosecutors have more cooperation from Mexico than ever before.

"It's only very recently that Mexican authorities began extraditing Mexican nationals at all," Monterrubio said. "President (Vicente) Fox's government is committed to the fight against crime and drug trafficking and organized crime. Before this administration, Mexico did not extradite its nationals. This is considered a great opening in that regard."

But critics say Mexican courts in some ways are expanding upon that country's traditional policy of opposing extradition of its citizens to the U.S.

This phenomenon might have benefited Las Vegas kidnapping suspect Pablo Guerrero, who was born in Arizona, had his run for the border not ended in California.

Guerrero, 24, is awaiting trial on charges alleging he abducted his estranged wife at gunpoint from her Las Vegas Valley home, tied her up in the back of a van and then ordered an accomplice to shoot her 17-year-old sister.

The sister, Sonia Gallardo, survived the October 2001 attack despite being shot between the eyes. She later testified that she overheard Guerrero say where he was headed with her bound sister.

"He said he was going to take her to Tijuana, where she'd learn how to love him," Gallardo testified.

Guerrero made it only as far as California. Authorities spotted the van near Victorville and, after a high-speed chase, arrested him and rescued his wife.

Had Guerrero crossed the Mexican border, he might have been offered the same protection against extradition as a Mexican national, even though he was born in the United States.

In recent cases, Mexican judges have extended extradition protection beyond nationals to their relatives, recognizing dual citizenship for U.S. suspects if their parents are Mexican, as Guerrero's are.

American scholars who study Mexican foreign policy say they don't expect the extradition issue to be resolved soon.

"There's no question that the general tenor of binational relations affects it," said Ed Williams, a University of Arizona professor who has penned several books on Mexican policy. "For instance, the Mexicans are angry with us for not paying attention to them on things like immigration rights and water rights, and I think you'll see that currently affecting extraditions."

Despite the odds, Coumou says he will continue to relentlessly pursue Villanueva-Soto's extradition.

"We certainly want to bring her back here, because that's where the crime occurred," he said. "We want to have people tried in our courts before our judiciary and serve time in our prison, because that's the way it should be."