Judge Rejects Motion for New Trial in Camarena Case : Courts: He dismisses claims that juror misconduct influenced verdicts against defendants convicted of murdering a DEA agent.

Rejecting defense arguments that there had been misconduct during jury deliberations, a federal judge in Los Angeles on Monday declined to grant a new trial to men convicted in the 1985 kidnaping and murder of U. S. drug agent Enrique Camarena.

U. S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie said that allegations by juror William Parris that fellow panel members had ignored his warnings not to read newspapers during the trial lacked credibility. The judge also said he did not believe Parris’ assertion that the jurors had considered “extraneous outside information” that was not entered into evidence at trial.

Additionally, Rafeedie said that testimony given by Parris at a hearing in November contradicted statements he had made about the jury deliberations at an earlier hearing in August. The judge said that Parris stated in August that the jurors had followed his instructions about avoiding media trial coverage. The judge also said that it was significant that Parris had voted in favor of all the jury verdicts.

Rafeedie said that Parris’ allegations were contradicted by other jurors “in almost every conceivable way.” Later, the judge added, “the court believes the testimony of the other jurors.”

An affidavit filed in mid-August by Parris was the basis of defense lawyers’ motions for a new trial. Parris cited the presence of newspapers in the jury room and juror discussions about the fact that one defendant, Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros, had a prior conviction on drug charges. However, the lawyers also cited admissions by several jurors that they had heard and discussed news reports about the case after they returned their first guilty verdicts against Matta on July 26.

Rafeedie said Monday there was no relationship between the fact that the jurors had discussed the media reports and “any material issue on any of the remaining defendants.” He emphasized that the jurors took considerable time in reaching their remaining verdicts.

During a Nov. 5 hearing, the vast majority of the jurors said that--with the exception of their first verdicts against Matta--they had not talked about the other matters Parris claimed they had.

Matta, a convicted Honduran drug kingpin; Ruben Zuno Arce, a prominent Mexican businessman and the brother-in-law of former Mexican President Luis Echeverria Alvarez, and Juan Jose Bernabe Ramirez, a former Mexican state policeman, were convicted on three charges.

The counts included conspiracy to kidnap, torture and murder of Camarena in support of a racketeering enterprise; conspiracy to kidnap a Drug Enforcement Administration agent who was performing his official duties, and aiding and abetting the kidnaping of a federal agent.

The fourth defendant, Javier Vasquez Velasco, a former bodyguard to Mexican drug dealers, was found guilty of two counts of committing violent acts in aid of racketeering in the Jan. 30, 1985, deaths of John Walker, an American writer, and Alberto Radelat, a Cuban medical student, who were murdered after they inadvertently walked into a party of narcotics traffickers at a Guadalajara restaurant and were mistaken for DEA agents.

Just a week later, on Feb. 7, 1985, Camarena was abducted from a Guadalajara street, taken to the home of narcotics kingpin Rafael Caro Quintero, and interrogated and tortured for more than 30 hours before he died. Camarena’s mutilated body--and that of his pilot, Alfredo Zavala Avelar, who was kidnaped separately--was found a month later at a ranch outside Guadalajara.

Defense lawyers asserted Monday that Rafeedie had erred in his ruling. After the hearing, one of Matta’s lawyers, Martin R. Stolar, said: “This ruling is likely to be Point 1 of our appeal.”

Vasquez’s lawyer, Gregory Nicolaysen, said that the basic standard for granting a new trial is showing that there is a reasonable possibility that one juror’s decision has been affected by information that was not introduced into evidence. Nicolaysen said that Parris’ affidavit clearly met that standard.

Zuno’s lawyer, Edward Medvene, agreed, saying: “The interests of justice cry out for a new trial.”

Assistant U.S. Atty. John Carlton sharply disagreed. During his argument, the prosecutor asserted that Parris’ testimony was not credible and belied “the careful consideration” of evidence by the jurors during their deliberations.

Carlton emphasized that during a hearing on Aug. 2, Parris had said jury deliberations had not been tainted by outside influences. However, two weeks later, Parris filed his affidavit.