Resident with 11 ounces of fentanyl gets two years in federal prison

Prosecutors asked for sentence of nearly five years

OAKLAND >> A Richmond man arrested last year with 11 ounces of fentanyl and nearly $10,000 in cash was sentenced to two years in federal prison Monday after a U. S. District Judge brushed off defense arguments that the defendant had been coerced into drug sales by people who held him hostage and beat him at the Arizona/ Mexican border.

Jairo Noel RodriguezMartinez has been in Santa Rita Jail since December, when DEA agents raided his Richmond home and found a little more than 11 ounces of fentanyl, more than 2 ounces of methamphetamine and about half an ounce of cocaine, court records show. During his jail stay, he contracted COVID-19 and was quarantined.

Before his sentencing,

Rodriguez-Martinez admitted to possessing all three drugs for distribution and pleaded guilty to a federal offense. Federal prosecutors asked for Rodriguez-Martinez to be sentenced to four years and eight months, arguing that the amount of fentanyl seized showed he was at least a middle-level narcotics dealer.

But Rod r i g uez- Ma rtinez’s attorney, Naomi Chung, argued that her client had suffered enough. Rodriguez-Martinez came to the United States from Honduras as a teen fleeing “extreme poverty” and returned only when his father suffered a spinal and brain injury in a motorcycle crash, Chung said.

She argued for Rodriguez-Martinez’s immediate release from jail, noting that authorities already have initiated deportation proceedings against him.

Rodr ig uez-Mar tinez hoped to support his family with a construction job, Chung said, but instead was held hostage by the people he paid to help him cross the border. They confined him to a room with no windows for an entire month and beat him twice, she said.

“They agreed to release him so that he could work off his debt to them by selling drugs. They warned Jairo that if he tried to run or play games, they would find his family and kill them,” Chung wrote in a sentencing memo.

U. S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam was unpersuaded and said he wanted more evidence before he accepted Rodriguez-Martinez’s accounting.

“How could any of this justify immediate release for conduct this serious?” he asked Chung, who responded that she has had meetings with her client where he “breaks down in tears.”

“Every day he’s been in custody has been terrifying for him,” Chung said.

Rodr ig uez-Mar tinez apologized in court with the assistance of an interpreter, adding that “one learns from one’s mistakes.”

“I’m sorry for everything I’ve done. I know I hurt the community with what I did,” Rodriguez-Martinez said. “Also I have so many problems because I’m far from my family … I’m scared, I’m in a place where I feel I might get sick again or die or not be able to see my parents again.”

Rodriguez-Martinez tested positive for COVID-19 in July and requested painkillers and ointment for muscle aches despite being listed by Santa Rita staff as “asymptomatic,” Chung wrote in the sentencing memo. Gilliam said that unlike some other federal judges, he doesn’t believe defendants deserve a “COVID discount,” meaning a reduced sentence during the pandemic.

Gilliam said he appreciated Rodriguez- Martinez’s apology but warned him never to return to the United States.

“Move past this phase of your life and commit yourself to helping your family and doing that in a way consistent with the law,” Gilliam said, later adding, “Even if there are difficulties that they’re going through, the answer can’t be to break the law.”