Not guilty pleas in Mexican Mafia prison gang case

Eleven people charged in a conspiracy case related to the Mexican Mafia, a notoriously violent prison gang whose influence reaches beyond prison walls, pleaded not guilty Monday to felony charges.

The defendants — four men and seven women — are among 20 people accused in the case, the result of a three-year investigation dubbed “Operation Emero.”

Prosecutors have said the probe revealed how members of the Mexican Mafia, also known as La Eme, used prison phones, contraband cellphones, mail and email to communicate with associates on the outside who extorted victims, sold drugs and collected money on behalf of incarcerated gang members.

On Monday, San Diego Superior Court Judge Michael Smyth accepted not guilty pleas from the 11 defendants who appeared in court and scheduled a status conference for Thursday, when their lawyers will discuss bail and other issues.

The district attorney’s office has requested a hold on bail for some of the defendants until a judge can evaluate whether the funds each would use to pay bail were obtained legally.

Many of the people named in the 40-page complaint were arrested last week and remain in custody.

One man is in a hospital, where he underwent surgery for kidney and liver transplants, lawyer Gretchen von Helms said. That defendant and others are expected to be arraigned over the next few weeks.

“There are other individuals who have been charged in this case who are currently in either local or state prison facilities,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Sophia Roach said.

The defendants face charges including conspiracy to commit torture, conspiracy to commit assault causing great bodily injury, extortion, possession of drugs for sale, conspiracy to commit arson and possession of an assault weapon.

According to the investigation, the defendants are believed to have operated in two groups — led by either federal prison inmate Jose Alberto “Bat” Marquez or California death row inmate Ronaldo Ayala.

Marquez, a Mexican Mafia member and alleged enforcer for the Arellano Félix drug cartel, has been in federal custody since being extradited from Mexico in January 2007. He was sentenced to life in prison after a 2011 jury trial.

Ayala has been on death row since 1989 for the execution-style killings of three men in a southeastern San Diego auto shop.

Marquez and Ayala are not named as defendants in the new case. They will be treated as “unindicted co-conspirators” as the case proceeds, the prosecutor said.

dana.littlefield@sduniontribune.com

Littlefield writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune