Mexican Lawman Guilty of Perjury : Martinez Convicted of Lying to Panel Investigating Slaying of Drug Agent

A federal court jury Monday convicted Mario Martinez Herrera, a Mexican internal security officer, on a charge of lying to the grand jury investigating the kidnaping and killing of U.S. drug agent Enrique Camarena.

Martinez, 38, was accused of perjury for denying in grand jury testimony that he had ever been in Guadalajara, Mexico, the city where Camarena was abducted, tortured and killed early last year, allegedly by Mexican drug merchants.

Prosecutors have termed Martinez a “target” of the Camarena grand jury’s investigation, but he has not been charged in the U.S. drug agent’s death. Justice Department attorneys James Wilson and Daniel Fromstein kept the evidence and arguments in Martinez’s trial tightly focused on the single charge of perjury against the Mexican officer.

The Tijuana native, a commander in the Mexican General Directorate of Investigations and National Security, faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison when he is sentenced in February by U.S. District Judge J. Lawrence Irving.

Martinez had been offered a plea bargain if he provided information to federal agencies investigating the Camarena case, but from the moment of his arrest at a Chula Vista restaurant in September, he insisted he knew nothing about the American agent’s disappearance and death.

Defense attorney Michael P. Murray said the verdict would be appealed, on the grounds that he was not given a chance to find witnesses and develop evidence countering the testimony of a prosecution witness who placed Martinez in Guadalajara on several occasions in 1984.

Citing security reasons, prosecutors did not give Murray the name of their key witness--Cesario Garciabueno, a Mexican lawyer shot and left paralyzed by assailants angry that he was cooperating with the Drug Enforcement Administration--until two days before Martinez’s trial began last week.

Irving then denied Murray’s request for more time to construct a defense, saying there was “zero chance” witnesses could be convinced to travel from Mexico to the United States to testify in Martinez’s behalf. Only Martinez and a paid criminologist testified during the brief defense case.

Jurors interviewed Monday said the lack of defense evidence about Martinez’s whereabouts contributed to their finding of guilt. They said they had doubts about Martinez’s veracity, but believed Garciabueno’s testimony that he had seen the Mexican lawman in Guadalajara six times between July and September, 1984.

“There was just nothing there to convince us otherwise that he (Garciabueno) hadn’t seen him,” said jury foreman Eugene Walker, a branch manager at the Naval Ocean Systems Center on Point Loma. “The defense didn’t have anything there.”

Martinez’s brother, Saul Martinez, insisted after the verdict was returned that his brother was at his post in Culiacan, Sinaloa, near Mexico’s west coast, during the times Garciabueno placed him in Guadalajara, more than 375 miles farther south and inland.

Saul Martinez, a Tijuana resident, complained that the trial was unfair and that his brother had been prosecuted for political reasons.

“It’s not important who’s guilty here,” he said. “I think this is a political business. They need to pressure the Mexican government and this is a good way to do it.”

Despite repeated vows of cooperation between Mexican and U.S. officials, the Camarena case has been the cause of considerable friction between the two countries.

American investigators have complained about the slow pace of their Mexican counterparts’ prosecution of key figures in the case who have been jailed in Mexico. Mexican authorities, meantime, have chafed at allegations that corruption in their country was interfering with the investigation of Camarena’s death.

Martinez survived a purge of his agency--which has functions comparable to the FBI, the CIA and the Secret Service--following Camarena’s murder. But an FBI expert testified at the just-completed trial that his hair matched one found in the house in Guadalajara where Camarena was interrogated and tortured.

Murray contended that Garciabueno had Martinez confused with another man and that the hair evidence was inconclusive. Jurors interviewed after the verdict said they had not based their decision on the expert testimony about the hair.