Trial Attracts Attention From Many Corners

Jose Antonio Ortiz, an official with the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles, sat three rows back, diligently scribbling notes as U.S. prosecutors spun a tale of drug dealing, murder and corruption within the Mexican government.

It was the opening of a trial for four men accused in the murder of U.S. drug agent Enrique Camarena, and the presence of the Mexican diplomat provided a subtle reminder of the case’s international implications.

“It is a function of the consulate to ensure that the rights of Mexican citizens are respected,” Ortiz said in Spanish on Tuesday outside the Los Angeles courtroom of U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie. “This case is special for all the implications it will have.”

In the first day of the trial, the walnut-paneled courtroom became something of a theater as attorneys and witnesses began to reconstruct and debate the morbid details of the notorious killings of Camarena, his pilot, Alfredo Zavala Avelar, and two other men, allegedly at the hands of members of a Mexican drug cartel.

Assistant U.S. Atty. John L. Carlton began his opening argument by producing the smiling, poster-sized portrait of drug baron Rafael Caro Quintero from a stack of photographs underneath a courtroom table.

Convicted last year in the torture-murder of Camarena, Caro was a thousand miles away, locked up in a Mexican jail. His photograph, however, figured prominently as Carlton described the billion-dollar “Guadalajara narcotics cartel” Caro operated, allegedly with the help of defendant Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros, a convicted Honduran drug kingpin.

Carlton told the jury that Matta “was the connection between the Mexicans and the Colombian source of cocaine.”

But attorney Michael Burns, who is representing Matta, later countered in his own opening statement: “You’re going to hear horrible things in this trial. Dead bodies, dead people. It may disgust you. But if you forget your oath, something more horrible will happen. . . . You don’t want to live with convicting an innocent man.”

Security for the trial was tighter than usual at the downtown federal courthouse. Two of the defendants--Matta and Ruben Zuno Arce--are being held in special cells at the courthouse because federal officials said it was too dangerous to transport them from the Metropolitan Detention Center a few blocks away.

U.S. marshals also required visitors to pass through a metal detector before entering the courtroom.

The courtroom brought together some of the principal protagonists in the case, men whose roles have been depicted in several books and a television movie.

To the right of Judge Rafeedie, DEA agents Doug Kuehl and Hector Berrellez sat conferring with government prosecutors. The two agents had interrogated witnesses in the case and gathered some of the evidence that led to the charges against the four defendants.

Across the courtroom and directly facing the two agents, the defendants sat solemnly as they listened to Carlton describe their alleged roles in the killings. When Carlton described Matta as “a man with a temper and a taste for fancy jewelry,” the defendant looked up and stared coolly at the prosecutor.

About 60 reporters and relatives of the accused watched the trial. Among them was Nancy Vasquez, Matta’s wife.

She spent much of the day leafing through a Spanish translation of a paperback about the Camarena affair. It was titled “Desperadoes: Latin Drug Lords, U.S. Lawmen, and the War America Can’t Win.”