Judge Cuts Year Off Term in Drug Case

A Newport Beach homemaker, sentenced last year to 4 1/2 years in prison on cocaine charges, had her punishment reduced Monday to 3 1/2 years after a Los Angeles federal judge ruled that she was not a major drug trafficker.

U.S. District Judge William D. Keller granted a reduction-of-sentence motion filed by the lawyers for Carol Maciel, 44, who argued that the original sentence was unjust since there was no evidence presented at her trial to back up prosecution claims that she was a major drug dealer.

Defense attorneys also pointed out that Maciel, the mother of two, had no previous drug involvement.

Keller refused to cut Maciel’s sentence in half.

“That would be sending the wrong message to the public,” the judge said.

Convicted Last November

A jury deliberated less than three hours last November to convict Maciel, who was charged with one count of conspiracy to distribute cocaine, two counts of distributing the drug and one count of possession.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Darrell MacIntyre, who opposed the sentence reduction, charged that Maciel began selling cocaine to get her husband, Pablo, out of jail in Mexico, where he has been confined on unrelated drug charges.

According to trial testimony, Maciel approached an undercover agent for the federal Drug Enforcement Administration last April about obtaining high-quality cocaine.

She subsequently sold more than $56,000 of cocaine on several occasions to undercover agents before she was arrested last June 27 at the Red Lion Hotel in Newport Beach, MacIntyre said.