Judge Won’t Delay Mexican Lawman’s Trial

A federal judge Thursday turned down a request by the attorney for Mario Martinez Herrera, the Mexican lawman charged with lying to the grand jury investigating the death of U.S. drug agent Enrique Camarena, for more time to find witnesses in his client’s defense.

Defense lawyer Michael P. Murray, who for security reasons was given the names of key government witnesses against Martinez just 48 hours before going to trial this week, told U.S. District Judge J. Lawrence Irving that it would be “manifestly unfair” to require him to immediately put on a defense.

But Irving ruled that Murray had failed to justify his request for an interruption in Martinez’s trial on one charge of perjury. After meeting privately with Murray to hear what steps he had taken to locate defense witnesses, Irving said there was “zero chance of getting anybody up from Mexico to testify.”

Murray proceeded to call Martinez, 38, to the witness stand to counter testimony from a wheelchair-bound federal informant whose testimony placed the Mexican internal security agent in Guadalajara, Mexico, six times in 1984.

As he had before the federal grand jury in September, Martinez testified that he had never visited Guadalajara, except to pass through on the way to other Mexican cities.

Earlier, under cross-examination by Murray, the informant, Mexican attorney Cesario Garciabueno, acknowledged that he had confused Martinez with another man in providing information to Drug Enforcement Administration agents.

U.S. officials have said the other man--Carlos Martinez--is suspected of being involved in the kidnaping and murder of Camarena in Guadalajara last year.

Murray contends that agents mistook Mario Martinez for Carlos Martinez in arresting him in a Chula Vista restaurant in September, and that Garciabueno was in error in saying he saw Mario Martinez in Guadalajara in 1984.

A second government witness whose testimony was expected to place Mario Martinez in Guadalajara disappeared before he could appear in court. Cesar Lara, a former officer in the same security agency that Martinez serves in, apparently fled from a U.S. government safe house sometime before the trial began Tuesday, prosecutors said.

“We knew where to get him because we had put the guy in a safe place,” U.S. Atty. Peter K. Nunez said. “But when we went to get him, he was gone.” Nunez said there was no evidence of foul play in Lara’s disappearance.

Murray planned to call a criminologist to the stand early today to challenge the testimony of an FBI expert who testified that a hair found in the house where Camarena was tortured was a close match to Martinez’s hair. The expert will be the only additional defense witness, Murray said.