Jury to Soon Get Case in Mexican Mafia Trial

After only seven days of presenting evidence and witnesses, the defense rested Friday in the Los Angeles trial of 13 suspected members and associates of the Mexican Mafia prison gang.

The jury, which has been hearing the case since November, was caught by surprise when U.S. District Judge Ronald S.W. Lew told the panel at the start of Friday’s proceedings that the defense would conclude after offering some last-minute evidence.

Some of the 18 jurors and alternates shook their heads in amazement at the prospect that the lengthy case would soon be submitted to them.

“At last,” one juror murmured.

The lawyers representing the defendants said a short presentation made sense because they had already spent more than a month cross-examining the prosecution’s chief witness.

“The heart of the case was Ernest Castro, and then we called witnesses who remembered things” Castro said he didn’t remember, said Deputy Public Defender Ellen Barry.

The case has been billed by the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles as a major effort to combat the Mexican Mafia, a secretive prison gang with 200 to 400 members. It has been growing in influence among L.A.’s street gangs by, among other things, recruiting local gangbangers into the group.

The defendants are accused of murder, extortion and threats of violence in a case that, for the first time, employs federal racketeering and conspiracy charges against the Eme, as the gang is commonly called. Among the charges against them are the murders of three unpaid advisors to the 1992 prison gang film “American Me,” which starred Edward James Olmos.

Prosecutors took 4 1/2 months to present their case, laying out the evidence in more than 200 secretly recorded videotapes and audio recordings in which the defendants were heard discussing Eme business.

Much of the evidence was based on the testimony of former Eme member Castro, who provided rare insight into the gang’s inner workings. He agreed to become a government informant after being arrested in November 1993 for possessing illegal weapons.

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He still faces sentencing in that state case, but FBI Special Agent James P. Myers said he would appear at that proceeding to tell of Castro’s cooperation in the Mexican Mafia case.

The defense attorneys hammered away at Castro, whom they called a lying murderer who set up others to save his own skin.

For example, a gang member from the El Sereno district testified this week that violence between two rival El Sereno groups didn’t break out until Castro began frequenting the area in 1994 and befriended members of one of the gangs.

Gang member Johnny Perez, who said he was a member of the rival group, testified that he was scared of Castro because “he was giving orders and people listened” to him.

Earlier in his testimony, Castro, who goes by the nickname “Chuco,” said he could not recall how the El Sereno dispute began.

The defense attorneys continually attacked Castro’s credibility and his admission that he didn’t tell all that he knew to government investigators.

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Myers, who said he was one of Castro’s chief government handlers, was the defense’s last witness and acknowledged that Castro engaged in three unauthorized acts of criminal activity during his 16 months as a government informant. While he was authorized to do certain things to further the federal case, Myers said Castro was in the wrong for:

* Ordering “touch-up lights” on members of the 22nd Street and 29th Street gangs, meaning that the members could be beaten, but not killed, for running afoul of the Eme.

* Possessing an M-1 rifle, a World War II-era weapon.

* Possessing a 9-millimeter pistol.

Defense attorneys accused Castro of many more misdeeds, including bringing up the subject of possible violence against Olmos, whose gang film was known to have displeased the Mexican Mafia. They also accused him of confirming assaults on black inmates at one Los Angeles County jail facility and selectively recording some telephone calls and conversations to hide his own criminal activities.

But because of government objections, defense attorneys were largely unable to develop those assertions in front of the jury.

They were also unable to refute much of the government’s tape evidence. Only on occasion did a defense attorney offer a different version of a transcript of a tape, saying that Spanish-to-English translations of taped conversations were open to different interpretations.

Before releasing the jurors Friday, the judge repeated his admonition to them about discussing the case among themselves or learning about it in the media. “Don’t talk about it,” Lew said. “Don’t even think about it.”

The jury was instructed to return April 29 for the start of closing arguments. Next week, both sides will be working on jury instructions.