(Please read yesterday’s post before you read this one)
As soon as the jury pool that is not chosen is excused from the courtroom, the prosecution began. This was a federal criminal case, so the U.S. Government was the prosecution. The judge was the senior judge of the Northern District of Georgia, Orinda Evans. She was the presiding judge in the Jamal Lewis case, the Baltimore Ravens running back who was found guilty on charges that he aided a drug deal. She was a no-nonsense kind of judge who stopped the attorneys on both sides from being long-winded, which was much appreciated by us jury members.

The district attorney started out showing us this giant power point spreadsheet of this alleged Mexican drug smuggling and money laundering ring and the hierarchy of the gang (about 30 people total). The guys on trial were not at the top of the list – just basically the dumb flunkies who always take the hit. Everyone on that list had gone to trial but we didn’t know the outcome of their cases. 3 were illegal aliens and 2 were US citizens who lived on the Texas/Mexico border. What added to the length of this case was that the 3 aliens didn’t speak English and so there were 2 interpreters who interpreted English-to-Spanish in real time in 30 minute intervals. They spoke very low into the microphones which were hooked up to earphones for the defendants. When there were Spanish-speaking defendants on the witness stand, the interpreter would have to translate both ways out loud. This was very time consuming and you always wonder exactly what gets lost in translation and what doesn’t. One of the translators was much louder than the other when doing the simultaneous translation which made it quite difficult to follow the proceedings without getting distracted.

The 3 illegal defendants were all arrested at the time the DEA hit several stash houses at once. One guy was sleeping on an inflatable mattress with several cell phones and guns by his head. In the basement were over 500 3-foot-by-1-foot bales of pot. The arresting officers said the stench of pot was overwhelming when they entered the house. There were other drug things in the house too like drug ledgers and scales.

Another defendant was busted at another stash house with 2 other guys who were all sleeping in the front room with guns. The place was full of crystal meth. The dude had also been recorded on the phone as the guy who would pick up the drugs and drop off the money at separate locations. The problem for him was that they also had airplane surveillance video and still photo shots of him doing all this, so he was obviously the most fucked out of the 5 on trial.

The third defendant was woken up while they busted a supposed stash house. The case against him was the weakest of the five, as he was never listed on any of the police suspect lists for this sting, was never recorded on any tapped phone calls, and there were no drug paraphernalia in the house at all. The only thing in the house was a gun under the pillow of the bed he was sleeping on.

The fourth and fifth defendants were brothers who lived in Texas near the Mexico border. One of the brothers owned a car-hauling rig and the government had been on his trail since he bought several used cars in Georgia before he got to Atlanta. His rig was in town for a few days and the cops pulled them over about 90 miles outside of Atlanta on their way back to Texas. When they searched the cars, they found $1 million in two of the gas tanks. The money was double vacuum sealed.

A word to the wise - if you are ever being tapped on the phone by the government, the second you push the first button on the cell phone is when you are being recorded. So if you press your talk button or any button on your phone to begin a call, anything you say is made available. Most people, myself included, think that you are only recorded once someone else picks up on the intended line but that is not the case. While you are dialing and/or waiting while the other phone rings, what you say is being transmitted!!! So if you’re talking shit about the person you’re calling, it will come back to haunt you potentially.

Details of the case and verdict to follow….