Waiting for His Day in Court Since ’98

As he sits in Orange County Jail awaiting trial on charges of transporting cocaine, it is apparent that Art Romo is a long way from his days as the broker of a peace agreement among gangs.

Romo and two other men have been locked up since March 1998. Attorneys in the case say the three will finally be tried next month--maybe.

It is the second time Romo has found himself on the wrong side of the law since he organized the United Gang Council of Orange County and brokered a much-publicized gang peace treaty in 1992. The first time earned him a three-year sentence for laundering $60,000 for a Colombian drug cartel. This time, Romo, 39, is facing 30 years or more in prison if he is convicted of transporting more than 200 kilos of cocaine, allegedly for the Colombians again.

Although he is being tried with co-defendants Fernando Melendrez and David R. Gomez, authorities believe that Romo, a Santa Ana resident who owned a silk-screening business, is the ringleader and a local leader of the Mexican Mafia prison gang, said Orange County Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeff Ferguson. Romo’s bail is set at $2 million.

Ferguson, who has been putting together the prosecution’s case for almost four years with another prosecutor, said he does not know of another drug case in which defendants have been held this long before going to trial.

Prosecutors said they have strong circumstantial evidence against Romo; his lawyers contend that he will be freed after a jury hears the facts.

The complexity of the case and the multiple defendants who have filed separate legal motions have contributed to delays. One defendant’s attorney died, leading to more delays while his replacement familiarized himself with the case.

But Romo has also stretched out the inevitable trial date by hiring and firing defense attorneys. Each new attorney begins a new investigation and needs time to learn the facts of the case.

Justin Brooks, head of the Institute of Criminal Defense Advocacy at California Western School of Law in San Diego, said state law allows Romo to change attorneys as long as the trial judge permits it.

“If the judge is tolerant and thinks the issues raised by the defendant are legitimate, the trial can be delayed for years while he changes attorneys,” Brooks said. “California has very strict rules on a defendant’s right to choose his own counsel. Courts are afraid of running the risk of having a case reversed because a guy wasn’t allowed to choose his own counsel.”

The stakes are high for each man. Gomez, like Romo, is facing 30 years or more in prison if convicted, Ferguson said. Melendrez would earn a third strike and life in prison, he said.

Suspicions about Romo’s alleged ties with the Mexican Mafia have lingered since he engineered the 1992 peace treaty in Santa Ana. At the time, skeptical police officials were quoted as saying the accord was dictated by the Mexican Mafia because its drug sale profits were slipping while street gang members, who moved the narcotics, were busy shooting each other.

Friends and relatives have formed an ad hoc defense committee since Romo’s arrest. From his jail cell, Romo sends out written messages advocating the “Barrio Peace Initiative” and an end to gang violence. “What this boils down to is that I’m locked up and the violence is continuing on the streets. Nobody’s out there working to stop the drive-by shootings,” Romo said in an interview.

He also recently issued a handwritten, 12-page statement complaining that his attorneys “have all tried to help the government railroad me in some kinda way.” He is now on his fifth attorney, having fired the others.

“I understand that some of these attorneys like to play golf with the district attorneys on weekends, but please don’t tell me that I’m picking all the losers,” Romo wrote.

In October, he retained well-known criminal defense attorney Gary Pohlson. In an interview from jail last week, Romo proclaimed his innocence and said that he was happy with Pohlson “right now.”

Pohlson said he was disappointed by Romo’s “unfortunate comments” about his previous attorneys. “I’m doing an aggressive defense of my client,” Pohlson said. “This includes hiring another attorney who is researching the case and filing motions on his behalf to show his rights were violated.” The prosecution’s case starts with 276 kilos of cocaine found in vehicles driven by Melendrez and Gomez. After that discovery, court records state, a Santa Ana police dog alerted officers to the presence of drugs on the exterior of a rear door in Romo’s SUV. Narcotics were never found in Romo’s vehicle, but records show that 19 bottles of inositol were recovered. Inositol is used to dilute cocaine to increase its volume and maximize profits.

In the jailhouse interview, Romo denied any ties to the cocaine seizure, but he refused to discuss the inositol found in his vehicle. He and the others are accused of transporting and selling cocaine as members of a street gang. But the reality, law enforcement sources say, is that the three ended up as discarded remnants of a federal investigation that had bigger targets.

In 1998, a task force of federal and local narcotics officers in Los Angeles was investigating a Southern California drug ring, prosecutor Ferguson said. During the surveillance of ring members, agents tripped across Romo, Melendrez and Gomez.

On March 8, 1998, task force members had Gomez’s Fountain Valley house under surveillance, having been led there by suspects they were watching in Riverside County.

Court records show that Melendrez and Romo stopped at the home that day. Romo said he was simply visiting Gomez. Fountain Valley officers were drafted to assist the task force and stopped Melendrez’s and Gomez’s vehicles and found the cocaine inside, records show. Romo was stopped later in the day by Santa Ana officers.

Records show that Los Angeles narcotics agents requested that local police find a reason to do traffic stops of the suspects’ vehicles. Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Michael Martinez said in an affidavit that he “requested uniformed police officers from Fountain Valley conduct a traffic stop” of Gomez’s vehicle. The same request was made of Santa Ana police to stop Romo’s SUV.

Al Stokke, Melendrez’s attorney, did not return telephone calls to his office. Gomez’s attorney, Shirley MacDonald, declined to comment. But attorney Richard Schwartzberg, who is assisting Pohlson and wrote a legal motion on Romo’s behalf, said that the police stop of Romo was done without probable cause and was unconstitutional.

Ferguson acknowledged that the evidence against Romo is circumstantial. “Circumstantial evidence carries the same weight as direct evidence if the jurors are satisfied the circumstances are true. It’s a strong case,” he said.