Smuggler’s life on the line

IN his opening statement, the attorney for truck driver Tyrone Williams conceded a central point. Yes, the lawyer declared, Williams was “clearly guilty” of hauling illegal immigrants in a sealed trailer -- a tortuous, four-hour passage up the Rio Grande Valley that 19 of them did not survive.

It was also true, added Craig Washington, that once his client discovered all those “poor people” piled in stacks, he hastily unhooked his trailer and high-tailed it for Houston, concocting an alibi on the fly: “He doesn’t get any merit badges for that,” the attorney allowed.

As these concessions made clear, the United States vs. Tyrone Mapletoft Williams would not be a search to determine who was behind the wheel one steamy May night in 2003, or whether the trucker was in league with smugglers.

Rather, the trial would turn on intent, on what Williams knew, or should have known, was unfolding in the back of his 18-wheeler as he rolled up U.S. Highway 77 -- windows down, music on the CD player, a young woman at his side.

Seeking the death penalty, the prosecution painted Williams as a “vile and heartless truck driver” who ignored pounding and pleas from inside his trailer. In the defense telling, the truck driver was a poorly used tool of smugglers, who distracted him as they overloaded his trailer at a field outside the border town of Harlingen, Texas, and then, once the rig was underway, tripled the length of the journey.

The trial opened on a Monday in late October 2006, in the 11th-floor courtroom of U.S. District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal. It was not completed until mid-January, in part because of holiday breaks, in part because of illness, and in part because of the nature of the contested ground.

This was a courtroom struggle fought on the margins of the story line, with protracted wrangling, for example, over nuances such as whether Williams’ passenger in the truck cab, a drug courier named Fatima Holloway, had heard a “bumping” or a “banging” coming from the trailer.

“Am I correct, Ms. Holloway,” Washington asked during cross-examination, “that the description you gave to the noise here in your testimony ... you described it as a ‘banging’ noise, did you not?”

“Yes, I did.”

“OK. And my question is: Did you describe it on May 24th of 2003” -- in a debriefing by investigators -- “as being a ‘bumping’ noise?”

“I may have. I don’t remember.”

“Is there a distinction in your mind between ‘bumping’ and ‘banging’?”

“Yes.”

“Which is louder?”

“Banging.”

So it went, witness after witness, with the lawyers lingering over points that, though strategically pivotal, could seem almost picayune given the grotesque dimensions of the tragedy: Exactly how many illegal immigrants boarded? Who closed the trailer doors? What was the greater cause of death: a lack of oxygen or excessive heat?

Survivors speak

THE Bob Casey Federal Courthouse, a 12-story box of a building, operates on a centrally controlled air system. Whoever sets the temperature evidently is fond of sweaters. Jurors quickly took to wearing down vests and shawls into Rosenthal’s cavernous courtroom. One attorney kept a woolen throw on his lap. During closing arguments, it was possible to see the foggy breath of attorneys as they addressed the jury.

The persistent chill seemed to mock the testimony of survivors who, one by one, came into court and described how the terrible heat in the trailer tore at their bodies. Much of the recounting entered the record almost as boilerplate, as the prosecutor worked down a checklist of questions needed to pin down specific elements of the charges.

Here, for example, was Dilcia Sambrano-Molina, a 24-year-old Honduran with a long ponytail and a shy smile, testifying about conditions in the trailer at the journey’s end:

Did there come a time when she felt she “crossed over to the other side?”

Yes, she said through an interpreter, speaking Spanish in almost a whisper.

And how did your head feel at this point?

“It’s like you feel when you are very, very scared, big scared, like you are not there.”

How did your eyes feel?

“Watery. I was crying. I felt like my eyes were going to pop out.”

How did your throat feel?

“Like when you can’t breathe, like someone is choking you.”

How did your skin feel?

“I don’t think I felt my skin. I couldn’t feel my hands.”

She was one of 55 passengers -- 43 men and 12 women -- rounded up by immigration agents in the hours, and in some cases days, after Williams abandoned the trailer at a truck stop near the town of Victoria, 200 miles north of Harlingen.

Some had been too overcome to leave the truck stop, or even the trailer itself. Many others had staggered into a horse pasture and sunk down in the grass. When paramedics and police officers arrived, these survivors began, as one first responder remembered, “popping up like little moles all over that field.”

The hardier ones started walking along creek beds and highways. One made it all the way to Dallas before he was caught. Another turned up in Austin. The lead immigration agent on the case testified that it was possible uncounted others had slipped away and avoided detection altogether.

The survivors were ordered to remain in the United States as potential witnesses until legal proceedings were exhausted. In the meantime, they were issued temporary permits allowing them to work -- which, of course, is what most of them wanted in the first place.

Those summoned to testify arrived from all corners of the country: a pool-remodeling specialist from Tampa, Fla.; a house painter from Pasadena; a Home Depot carpet installer from Chicago; a Louisiana carpenter; a New Jersey truck repairman; a Miami beauty parlor assistant; and on and on.

The lead prosecutor was Assistant U.S. Atty. Daniel C. Rodriguez, a husky-voiced 51-year-old who wore a dark suit and black cowboy boots every day. This was his first death penalty case. A hard-charging type, Rodriguez would try to tear into any testimony that even remotely suggested Williams had behaved like anything less than a monster.

That led to an uncomfortable exchange with Enrique Ortega-Cohate, a portly construction worker who could be seen as one of the tragedy’s few heroes. Speaking broken English, he had persuaded someone at the truck stop -- evidently Williams -- to open the trailer doors.

Now, on the witness stand, Ortega-Cohate was asked on four separate occasions to repeat the exchange. With evident pride, he complied. Each time he began with a plaintive, “Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, sir.” After that, though, the words became muddled.

At first it sounded as if he was saying, “guy gotta die right here.” In subsequent repetitions, it seemed more like “a guy gonna die right here” or “there’s a guy that died right here.”

It was the defense position that, once Ortega-Cohate told Williams that passengers were in trouble, the trucker threw open the doors. Along with buying water for the passengers at two stops, this act suggested Williams had not been completely “vile and heartless,” as the prosecutor phrased it.

Rodriguez sought to debunk Ortega-Cohate’s story. “That didn’t happen,” the prosecutor argued. “He was hallucinating. He was delusional.” The government offered no alternative version of how, or why, the doors opened, but Rodriguez was determined to undercut the notion of Williams responding to a plea for help.

Instructing the interpreter to remain silent, Rodriguez paused for a moment and then put the witness through a simple drill.

“Please count to me to 10 in English,” he said in English.

Ortega-Cohate shifted in his seat, smiled wanly, said nothing.

Rodriguez repeated the request.

Another embarrassed smile, a pleading, over-the-shoulder glance toward the interpreter for help.

“Do you understand what I said?” Rodriguez asked.

Nothing -- only a lowered gaze, a shrug.

The prosecutor turned away in triumph. Rodriguez had made his point: Enrique Ortega-Cohate did not know enough English to follow a command to count to 10. Whether he had known enough to alert the truck driver and save 55 lives would be for the jury to decide.

In contrast to Rodriguez’s rat-a-tat style, Washington’s approach with witnesses was soft, circular. The 65-year-old defense attorney would apologize as he looped back, again and again, to previously covered ground. Forgetting a name, he’d slap his forehead and stammer about growing old. In time this came to seem like purposeful acting, a play for the jury’s sympathy.

In fact, this was the 13th death penalty trial for Washington, a tall, bearded man who wore bow ties and flavored his questions with “y’alls” and other Texas-isms. “I’ve never lost a person to the chair,” he declared outside court one day -- no small accomplishment, considering his theater of operations.

Washington put on relatively few witnesses. Instead, he built his case mainly through the cross-examination of prosecution witnesses, contrasting their testimony with statements made to investigators right after what he always referred to as “the tragedy.”

A few survivors, for instance, had told immigration agents that the trailer’s refrigeration unit seemed to come on toward the end -- more evidence, if true, that Williams at least had tried, however belatedly, to help his passengers. Now, though, one after another claimed not to recall saying any such thing.

Finally, in a fourth day of trying, Washington managed to break through.

“Did you tell the agent,” he asked Sambrano-Molina, speaking forcefully now, the agent’s report in his hands, “that the reason you regained consciousness and were able to get out of the truck was because the air conditioner was on?”

She balked, as though she did not understand the translated question. Washington persisted.

Did you tell the agent the air conditioner was on?

There was a pause, and then at last she bobbed her head.

“Si,” she said. “Si.”

“Yes, yes,” the interpreter repeated.

“Thank you!” Washington exclaimed, marking his legal pad with a flourish.

Placing the blame

WILLIAMS had been detained just hours after he fled Victoria. He checked himself into a Houston hospital, claiming that a surprise discovery of illegal immigrants in his trailer had left him “feeling nervous.” The police were summoned. By late afternoon, he had changed his story and was naming whatever smugglers’ names he could remember.

Eventually 12 smugglers, along with the driver and Holloway, were indicted. A first prosecutorial attempt against Williams ended in mistrial, after the jury failed to reach a verdict on all elements of the 20 potential death penalty counts.

By the time of this retrial, most other defendants already had been convicted in separate trials and given sentences ranging from minimal prison time to 20 years. One smuggler was still in Mexico, fighting extradition.

Under a 1994 change in federal immigration law, capital punishment can be sought in smuggling cases that result in death. This case would mark the first attempt to apply the ultimate punishment. But Williams was the only one facing a potential death sentence, with the government arguing that, as the driver, he was most culpable.

To secure a death sentence, the prosecution was required to prove Williams had “intentionally and specifically committed an act of violence.” In this case, Williams’ alleged violent acts essentially were inactions -- his lack of response to a desperate racket coming from the trailer, and his failure to turn on its refrigeration unit.

The coroner had listed heat stroke, suffocation and dehydration -- and in a couple of instances, crushing -- as multiple causes of death. The prosecution contended that a running refrigeration unit would have eliminated the risk of heat stroke, and that it was Williams’ responsibility to turn it on. Moreover, the government’s medical witness testified that a cooler trailer would have slowed the various metabolic processes of dying.

The defense maintained that suffocation would have occurred whether the airtight trailer was cooled or not: The unit does not introduce new oxygen into the trailer, but only recycles existing air. Thus, in the defense view, the bulk of the blame rested with the smugglers who put more passengers into the trailer than the oxygen supply could support.

In his opening statement, Washington had promised to prove that the principal architect of the tragedy was Abelardo Flores, the smuggler who had recruited Williams. Flores had paid Williams $7,500 to haul a load of immigrants from Harlingen to Robstown, a 90-minute run that passed through a Border Patrol checkpoint near Sarita.

Flores, Washington contended, was the “short, chubby” smuggler who some survivors believed closed the trailer doors, an accusation Flores denied. He also was the only one with a financial interest in keeping an accurate headcount -- his cut was $450 for every person who boarded the truck.

Along with Holloway, Flores had negotiated a deal with prosecutors to testify in exchange for their support for a lighter sentence. He shuffled into court in a green jail jumpsuit, and before long was engaged in a tedious and often testy duel with Washington.

“Why,” the defense lawyer demanded at one point, “would you take a chance on carrying that many people in one truck when you could carry them safely in two trucks?”

“What’s the difference?” Flores shot back. “Why would it be safer in two trucks?”

Washington, exasperated: “Because they wouldn’t breathe up the oxygen, and they wouldn’t have died!”

Flores: “No. They wouldn’t have died if Mr. Williams wouldn’t have gone all the way to Victoria. If he would have done as he was told, nobody would have died.”

Washington reminded Flores that his own worker, a man known as Jo Jo, called Williams en route to tell the trucker to take the load to Houston, about three times as far as originally planned.

“So,” the lawyer pressed, “the person who told him to go past Robstown is whose fault it really is, isn’t it?”

“No,” said Flores, his tone scolding, “I think it still goes back to your client.”

In his two days on the stand, Flores provided a crude primer on the ways of smugglers. He testified that he had learned the trade from a master he identified only as “Jaime.”

It was Jaime who taught Flores tricks for passing trucks through border checkpoints. He taught him how to recruit drivers at truck stops and, in particular, to seek out African American and white drivers, preferably with out-of-state plates: “That’s the way Jaime taught me,” Flores said.

“A Mexican was more [likely] to get stopped at the checkpoint and get checked, “ Flores explained.

In May 2003, Flores testified, he spotted Williams at a warehouse, waiting on a load of watermelons. He sidled over, split open a melon, and made his pitch: “I just told him, you know, that we had a load and it was real quick, it was an hour and a half away, and he could make some good money -- more money than he would make taking a bunch of watermelons.”

After some back and forth, Williams agreed, believing he was to carry about 15 people through the checkpoint to a lot behind a motel in Robstown. In fact, Flores testified, 60 people were loaded -- but he made sure Williams did not know this. As the trucker remained in the cab, Flores counted out Williams’ $6,500 share, slowly:

“I was taught by Jaime,” Flores explained, “when you pay somebody, you want to be paying them slow. I didn’t want him to be scared. I wanted him to, you know, watch the money be counted, show him that it was counted in full, and for that trailer to be loaded and for me to be finished counting that money at the same time.”

The trip was a success, and two weeks later Flores agreed to pay the driver $7,500 to smuggle 60 immigrants to Robstown. Flores testified he did not see how many boarded. He admitted, however, that after the load left, a ringleader paid him for an additional 15 passengers and also promised to buy him a Camaro the next day.

For a witness who, testimony indicated, had talked about lining up more loads of human cargo once the clamor died down, Flores was not shy about adopting an occasional pose of piety.

Yes, Flores conceded toward the end of cross-examination, he was willing to admit he had made mistakes.

“Part of it was my fault,” he told Washington, lowering his eyes like a chastised altar boy.

“How could it be your fault?” the lawyer asked, hiding any whiff of sarcasm.

“Because I hired that man over there” -- he nodded toward Williams, seated at the defense table -- “who doesn’t care about no other human being.”

The verdict

THAT man over there would remain a spectator throughout. There was some discussion about Williams wanting to testify, but in the end he did not. This left unchallenged Flores’ account of the loading and Holloway’s description of what sounds of distress could or could not be heard coming from the trailer.

Williams, in custody since his arrest, wore loose-fitting business suits and wire-rimmed glasses to court. Washington’s co-counsel, Oliver Sprott Jr., would straighten the defendant’s tie knot each morning. Then Williams would settle into a leather swivel chair and barely move throughout the day, demonstrating a trucker’s talent for the long sit. He’d make a note or two and lower his gaze whenever images of the dead were displayed on courtroom video screens.

The trial unfolded in two phases. After the seven-man, five-woman jury found Williams guilty of participating in a smuggling operation that ended in death -- not surprising, given the opening concessions -- it moved into the penalty phase, which began in early January.

Testimony in this portion moved rapidly, with relatives, character references and jailers following one another to the stand. When his mother pleaded for his life, the trucker dropped his emotional guard for the first time and appeared to weep. When his 8-year-old daughter took the stand, her braids bouncing, he smiled.

Williams’ wife, now working two jobs to support their three children, described him, somewhat coolly, as “a better than average father” who loved to bake cakes and play soccer. At heart, she said, he was “a big kid. He loves to sit and watch cartoons.” It was true that the legend “Wild Child” already was painted on Williams’ truck when he bought it. It was also true that he never had it removed.

In closing arguments, it became clear that no knockout blows had been delivered by either side. The prosecution could not erase the fact that the trucker had responded -- albeit slowly and ineffectively -- to the disaster transpiring in his trailer. Washington, in turn, had not pinned the trailer door-closing, and thus the blame, squarely on Abel Flores, as he had promised.

In the end, the defense lawyer argued, it all boiled down to intent: “Do you think anybody intended, when they loaded that trailer, that they would die that night or the next morning? The intent was to get from Point A to Point B.”

One last time, he reminded the jury that Williams had stopped twice to buy water for the poor souls in the trailer.

“You don’t buy water,” he said, “for people you are trying to kill.”

The jury came back on a cold, rainy Thursday afternoon. It had deliberated nearly five days, working methodically through a 400-question form. By law, it had been given three sentencing options: death, life without parole, or a prison term to be determined by the judge.

With the courtroom full and quiet, Judge Rosenthal, her voice quavering at first, began to read through the jury’s work. As she worked through the form, the outcome gradually presented itself: Williams would be spared a death sentence, but would spend the rest of his life in prison, with no chance for parole.

It was his 36th birthday.

The trucker took a sip from a plastic water bottle. Washington hunched over and began to cry -- “tears of joy,” he later said. Outside court, Rodriguez declined to comment, as he had throughout the trial, while his superior offered a not quite wholehearted endorsement of the jury’s decision.

Three jurors met later with reporters, on a promise their names not be made public. They seemed to want to talk mostly about the victims. They had begun each day of deliberation, they said, with 19 seconds of silence, one for each of the dead.

“These are people; they are not cattle,” said a teacher. “They do not deserve to be treated as anything less than that.”

A second juror, in an echo of Washington’s closing argument, said the decision to spare Williams’ life had turned on intent. Noting the trucker’s only previous smuggling escapade seemingly had gone well, this juror said: “He had done it before. He was doing it again. And, in my mind, he figured it would be the same outcome. If I could find intent in this, then it would have been death.”

Rosenthal scheduled final sentencing for Aug. 23 -- a formality, because she is bound by the jury’s decision of life without parole. Until then, Williams will be kept in an isolated cell at the federal detention center here. As for the survivors who testified, there’s still a chance one last smuggler will be brought back from Mexico for trial. So for now they will be allowed to remain in America, working.

peter.king@latimes.com