Former Montoya Aide Gets 90 Days After Plea Bargain

A former top aide to convicted former state Sen. Joseph Montoya was sentenced Thursday to 90 days in jail for lying on a Veterans Administration home loan application.

Amiel Jaramillo, 36, originally was charged with racketeering, extortion and conspiracy along with his former boss, who is serving a 6 1/2-year sentence in federal prison.

But prosecutors agreed to dismiss the corruption charges against Jaramillo in exchange for his guilty plea to a single count of making a false statement to a government agency.

Meanwhile, an eight-woman, four-man jury Thursday began deliberating the case of former Sen. Paul Carpenter, on trial in federal court on four charges of racketeering, extortion and conspiracy. Carpenter was indicted as a result of the same investigation of Capitol corruption that snared Montoya and Jaramillo.

The Carpenter jurors started their deliberations after U.S. District Judge Edward Garcia read them a series of detailed instructions on the complex federal racketeering and extortion laws. Carpenter, a Democrat who is now a member of the State Board of Equalization, faces a maximum of 80 years in prison and a fine of up to $750,000 if he is convicted on all charges.

In Jaramillo’s case, he admitted that he failed to disclose that he owed more than $18,000 in student loans when he filed an application for a Veterans Administration mortgage loan application in 1987.

Defense attorney Christopher Wing said federal probation officers had recommended that Jaramillo, now a lawyer in private practice, should not serve any time behind bars. But U.S. District Judge Milton Schwartz disagreed.

Schwartz, who presided over Montoya’s trial earlier this year, said that in handing down the sentence it would be unfair to consider evidence of Jaramillo’s complicity in Montoya’s crimes because Jaramillo would have no opportunity to respond.

“But if the things that came out at that trial were true, there would be a substantial incarceration sentence,” Schwartz said.

Jaramillo was given until Nov. 1 to begin serving his sentence. The delay will give Jaramillo time to wage a legal fight to retain his license to practice law.

Jaramillo was chief consultant to the state Senate Business and Professions Committee, of which Montoya was chairman.