Conviction Quashed in Murder of Camarena : Courts: A federal judge overturns the guilty verdict against a Mexican businessman, saying the prosecution misrepresented a witness’s testimony.

Saying the prosecution misstated and “exploited” testimony of a key witness, a federal judge Friday threw out the conviction of wealthy Mexican businessman Ruben Zuno Arce in the 1985 torture and murder of U.S. drug agent Enrique Camarena.

U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie ordered a new trial for Zuno, the brother-in-law of former Mexican President Luis Echeverria.

“I am persuaded that the trial was unfair,” Rafeedie said.

The judge scheduled the retrial to begin July 23 for Zuno, 61, whose inclusion in the case strained relations between the United States and Mexico.

Zuno’s father once was governor of the state of Jalisco and his sister is married to Echeverria. Prosecutors alleged that he was a link between Mexican drug lords and the highest levels of government.

Camarena was abducted in Guadalajara, Mexico, then tortured and killed in apparent retaliation for Drug Enforcement Administration campaigns against cocaine traffickers.

The key witness against Zuno was Hector Cervantes Santos, a former Guadalajara riot policeman who testified that Zuno participated in three meetings at which Camarena’s abduction was planned.

At issue Friday was his testimony about the transfer of Camarena’s body after it initially was buried in La Primavera, a town northwest of Guadalajara.

Cervantes said the body was moved to a distant ranch because Zuno “would be in trouble” if it was discovered on land he owned in La Primavera.

During the trial, prosecutors successfully fought an effort by the defense to introduce a photograph showing that the grave was in the state-owned La Primavera Park, not on Zuno’s property.

But in their own closing arguments to the jury, a prosecutor himself cited soil samples linking the body to the park--and said this finding “corroborated everything Cervantes (said).”

During a half-hour hearing Friday, Assistant U.S. Atty. John L. Carlton tried to talk the judge out of overturning the conviction, asserting that there was no intentional “misrepresentation.”

The burial site “was never a focus of the government case,” Carlton said, having been “only mentioned twice in passing” during the prosecution’s five-hour closing argument.

“To throw out the 10 weeks of trial and the jury’s verdict on the basis of this particular issue would be an injustice,” he said.

But Rafeedie noted that the government’s high-profile prosecutions in the Camarena slaying--last summer’s trial produced four convictions--had not been based on overwhelming evidence. The government relied largely on the testimony of paid informants who once worked with the Mexican cocaine cartels.

“The zeal with which you prosecuted this case is very admirable,” Rafeedie said. But “the evidence against all these defendants was minimal.”

In this case, “the suggestion by the government . . . that the bodies were buried on land owned by Mr. Zuno” could have been crucial, the judge said, adding that prosecutors “knew that was not the truth.”

Zuno had faced a life sentence on convictions for committing a violent act in aid of a racketeering enterprise, conspiring to kidnap a federal agent and aiding and abetting the kidnaping of a federal agent while he was performing his duties.

The wiry, gray-haired defendant, who has been in custody for most of the past two years, smiled at his wife and embraced his lawyer, Edward Medvene, after the judge granted the motion for a new trial.

“I’ve always said that my husband was innocent,” his wife, Enriqueta, said outside court, “and this gives us a new chance to prove it.”

She said she was optimistic about the new trial “now that he’s separated from all other defendants.”

One of the other men convicted in the conspiracy, Honduran drug lord Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros, was sentenced to three life terms earlier in the week. Sentencing for two other defendants was postponed until later this month.

Zuno was seized at a San Antonio supermarket Aug. 9, 1989, after traveling to the Texas city on a business trip. Immigration authorities said he was suspected of drug trafficking, but he soon was brought to Los Angeles for questioning as a “material witness” in Camarena’s murder, then indicted in the case that December.