Mistrial Ruled in Case of Alleged Drug Kingpin : Courts: Judge orders retrial after jury deadlocks 11 to 1 on charges against Bolivian national accused of running organization.

After deliberating for nearly a week, jurors on Wednesday gave up trying to reach a verdict in the case of a Bolivian national charged with running a massive international drug and money laundering organization. The judge ordered a mistrial.

The federal jury voted 11 to 1 to convict Jorge Roca Suarez on at least some of the conspiracy, tax evasion, drug and money laundering counts against him. Had he been convicted, those charges could have sent him to prison for the rest of his life.

Although U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson had sent the jurors back to deliberate further in an effort to reach a consensus, the lone juror voting for acquittal held steadfast. Wilson declared a mistrial, allowing the jury to go home three weeks after it was impaneled.

A new trial with a new jury is scheduled to begin Jan. 26. Roca already has been in custody for two years, and he will remain behind bars until he can be retried.

Roca’s lawyers were unavailable for comment, but one of his nephews said relatives thought that the judge, by issuing a standard instruction when faced with deadlocked deliberations, had tried to pressure the holdout juror to change her vote.

“They tried to force her to change her mind,” said the nephew, who asked not to be identified. “That’s unfair.”

Prosecutors declined to comment in detail but were obviously frustrated by the mistrial, particularly in light of the fact that a single juror blocked a conviction.

“We presented the evidence to the jury, and they have spoken,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. John F. Gibbons, the lead prosecutor in the case. “We intend to present this case again in late January.”

The mistrial comes after seven of Roca’s co-defendants pleaded guilty to various drug or money laundering charges. Beatriz Roca, who is Jorge Roca’s sister, said in court last month that she participated in the collection, transportation and shipment of drug money at the direction of Jorge Roca and others.

Also named as defendants in a 1991 federal indictment were Roca’s wife and several other relatives. They too entered guilty pleas in return for shorter prison sentences than they might have received if found guilty by a jury.

But plea agreements generally are not admissible as evidence, and jurors in this case were not told of them.

Roca is charged with running one of Bolivia’s largest drug cartels and shipping huge supplies of cocaine paste to Colombia, where it was allegedly processed into powder and then sent to this country. Prosecutors said Roca worked with Pablo Escobar, Colombia’s best-known cocaine kingpin. One witness in the trial said he introduced Roca to Escobar, although defense lawyers accused that witness of lying.

Authorities say that Roca had immigrated to Southern California from his native Bolivia by the late 1970s and then returned to Bolivia in the early 1980s. He allegedly began working for his uncle, Roberto Gomez Suarez, who at the time was known as the “Cocaine King of Bolivia.”

In the early 1980s, Roca allegedly took over his uncle’s business. According to an indictment, Roca became “a leader and decision-maker” of the so-called Santa Ana cartel.

Roca eventually returned to the United States, buying a 19-room home in San Marino, where he was arrested in December, 1990. Prosecutors said Roca orchestrated his international drug organization from Southern California.