Court Upholds New Trial for Man Convicted in Camarena Case : Appeal: Justices agree that federal prosecutor twisted a witness’s testimony. Mexican businessman was found guilty of involvement in DEA agent’s murder.

A federal appeals court in San Francisco on Friday upheld a lower court order granting a new trial to a prominent Mexican businessman convicted of involvement in the 1985 torture and murder of U.S. drug agent Enrique Camarena.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the May, 1991, decision of U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie, who threw out the conviction of Ruben Zuno Arce on grounds that a federal prosecutor misstated and “exploited” the testimony of a key government witness.

Rafeedie said at the time that Zuno, the brother-in-law of former Mexican President Luis Echeverria Alvarez, was denied a fair trial because of statements made by Assistant U.S. Atty. Manuel Medrano during his closing argument.

A federal court jury, after a 10-week trial, convicted Zuno in July, 1990, of 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. He faced a life sentence.

In a case that has strained relations between the United States and Mexico, federal prosecutors accused Zuno, now 62, of acting as a link between the highest levels of the Mexican government and a multibillion-dollar drug cartel based in Guadalajara.

In retaliation for Drug Enforcement Administration raids against their operations, members of the Guadalajara drug ring and some of their Mexican law enforcement allies abducted Camarena off a Guadalajara street on Feb. 7, 1985. He was interrogated and tortured over the next two days and his mutilated body--and the body of his pilot, Alfredo Zavala Avelar--was found a month later at a ranch 60 miles from the city.

Zuno was seized at a San Antonio supermarket Aug. 9, 1989, while 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 the Camarena murder investigation, then indicted in December, 1989.

The key witness against Zuno in the trial was Hector Cervantes Santos, a former Guadalajara riot policeman with ties to drug traffickers, who became a government witness and was relocated to this country. By the time the trial started in May, 1990, he had been paid $36,000 by the United States government for relocation, housing and other expenses, court documents show.

Cervantes testified that Zuno participated in three meetings at which Camarena’s abduction was planned.

At issue in the appeal was Cervantes’ 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. Zuno’s attorneys tried to discredit the testimony by introducing a photograph showing that the grave was in the state-owned La Primavera Park, not on Zuno’s property.

But prosecutors assured Rafeedie that Cervantes was speaking of the town of La Primavera, not the park, and Rafeedie did not allow the jury to see the photograph.

In his closing argument, Medrano said that because “the bodies were buried at La Primavera Park, there was concern somehow that Zuno might be implicated.” Defense lawyers moved for a mistrial, and Rafeedie granted the motion.

“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.”

At a hearing on the government’s appeal in December, Assistant U.S. Atty. John Carlton said there had been no attempt to mislead the judge or jury. He also contended that the statements about the park had not played a crucial role and that the exclusion of the photograph had not prejudiced Zuno’s case.

In the appeals court decision Friday, the three-judge federal panel wrote that it is “difficult to determine with certainty” the importance of the photograph Zuno’s lawyers tried to introduce. However, the appeals court said Rafeedie had concluded that it might have been helpful to the defense.

“We . . . find that the district judge did not abuse his discretion in concluding . . . that the disputed exhibit would have been useful as rebuttal evidence and that its exclusion prejudiced Zuno Arce to the point of meriting a new trial,” wrote Circuit Judges Melvin Brunetti, Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain and Thomas G. Nelson.