Border agent faces retrial in teen’s death

PHOENIX — A U.S. Border Patrol agent who was acquitted of seconddegree murder while jurors deadlocked on lesser counts will be retried in the 2012 cross-border shooting of a rock-throwing teen, prosecutors announced Friday in Arizona.

Agent Lonnie Swartz will be retried on voluntary and involuntary manslaughter charges, said Cosme Lopez, a spokesman for the federal court. The prosecution did not plan to issue a statement on the decision, he said.

Court records say the new trial before Judge Raner Collins is set for Oct. 23 and expected to last four weeks.

Luis Parra, an attorney for the family of 16-yearold Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez, said he was with them in the courtroom in Tucson when the retrial decision was announced. They welcomed the news with joy.

Defense attorneys Sean Chapman and Jim Calle did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

Lee Gelernt, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union in New York, is handling a civil case for the teen’s mother. The lawsuit seeks monetary damages from Swartz.

Gelernt said the decision to retry the criminal case should not affect the civil action.

Elena Rodriguez was killed when Swartz fired 16 shots through a 20-foot fence on an embankment above Calle Internacional, a street lined with homes and small businesses in Nogales, Mexico.

Prosecutors acknowledged during the monthlong trial that the teen was lobbing rocks across the border during a drug-smuggling attempt but said he did not deserve to die.

Defense attorneys countered that Swartz was justified in using lethal force against rockthrowers and shot from the U.S. side of the border in self-defense.