Release of IDs on gang informants requested

Confidential sources used to build racketeering case

An Albuquerque courtroom turned into a mass of red and yellow this week — the colors of the prison jumpsuits of two dozen heavily guarded defendants charged in the federal government’s case against a notoriously violent prison gang known for ordering hits on suspected law enforcement informants.

The dicey issue: should U.S. District Judge James Browning require the government to reveal the identities of certain confidential informants whose evidence helped an FBI-led task force build the massive racketeering case against members and associates of the Syndicato de Nuevo Mexico gang?

Seven defendants, in preparing their defense, joined in a motion to try to obtain informant names, addresses and other information provided to law enforcement about the March 2014 stabbing death of SNM member Javier Molina.

Molina allegedly was killed by SNM members for being an informant.

This week, the judge denied all but one of the defendants’ requests for such information. Browning is still deciding whether to release an informant’s identity to Anthony Ray Baca, an alleged SNM leader who is charged with ordering Molina’s murder.

Under the law, prosecutors have the right to keep such identities of their “confidential human sources” secret, but not always. Depending on the circumstances and the role the informant played in the investigation, a judge can order the release to a defendant and his defense team. In this case, such information would be considered protected and not to be released to third parties.

The FBI in a search warrant affidavit filed in September cited at least nine FBI confidential sources. Seven of those are SNM gang members, according to a search warrant affidavit filed by the lead FBI case agent. “I am certain that all nine informants, once their identifies are revealed, will be marked for death by the gang,” he wrote.

At least one informant this year was shot twice and lived. Another was beaten and left for dead, the affidavit said.

But defense lawyers contended in a joint motion seeking certain informant disclosure that the government has “relied heavily on insider informants, many looking to ‘make a deal’ during its sprawling investigation.”

Repeat offenders

Most, if not all, of the 30 defendants in the primary federal racketeering case are repeat violent offenders. Their indictments were the result of a complex multiagency investigation sparked in 2015 by a tip that SNM leaders had ordered a “hit” on then New Mexico Corrections Secretary Gregg Marcantel and a corrections administrator.

The murder plot was foiled, but the law enforcement inquiry dubbed Operation Atonement unleashed a string of indictments that continue to this day against SNM members or associates who live in and out of prison. Altogether, the investigation has netted the arrests of more than 70 people, many on drug or weapons charges.

The indictment contends SNM is a racketeering organization because its members engage in violent acts to further the interests of the gang, which formed after the 1980 prison riots at the New Mexico State Penitentiary outside Santa Fe. Three defendants — Gerald Archuleta, Roy Montoya and Fred Munoz — have pleaded guilty over the past year but have not been sentenced. A trial for the others is set for next summer.

There was no denying the spectacle this week of two dozen SNM gang members seated in Browning’s Downtown Albuquerque courtroom. To ensure their safety and that of the others in the public setting, each defendant was secured in a belly chain, leg irons, and handcuffs enclosed by a special U.S. Marshals Service black security box that Browning himself tried out.

“I sat up here for 1½ hours with one of those boxes on so I know what it feels like,” the judge said in court during Tuesday’s hearing. “It’s not very comfortable but they (the U.S. marshals) continue to think that’s something’s that’s necessary,” Browning told one defense lawyer whose client asked to be excused from attending future hearings.

The client said it was too much of a physical hardship to be shackled with the box for the 12-hour round trip from the Otero County Prison south of Alamogordo where some defendants are being held. Browning denied the request, saying, “Everybody needs to be here. We’re really shifting into the facts now.”

Afterward, one of the spectators in the courtroom scoffed.

“I don’t feel sorry for them at all. They killed my son,” said one woman, whose son, Adrian Burns, was found dead in a burned-out car outside Socorro in 2012. Burns’ murder had been unsolved until the FBI-led investigation into SNM.

One defendant, Rudy Perez, 47, watched the proceedings from his wheelchair. He is alleged by one confidential informant to have made shanks out of his prison-issued walker to help SNM murder Molina at the Southern New Mexico Correctional Facility near Las Cruces. Perez, who is disabled, denies any involvement. Before the hearing, the U.S. Attorney’s Office agreed to turn over the name of the informant in Perez’s case under a protective order to keep the information from leaking out.

In questioning government attorneys about the murder, Browning inquired about whether defendant Jerry Montoya was alleged to have helped physically carry out the murder of Molina, who was stabbed about 40 times with three shanks.

“He’s the shankster, is that the right word?” Browning asked.

Montoya has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Before the hearing, Browning denied a U.S. Marshals Service request to erect a partition around alleged SNM leader Baca so he couldn’t see or signal his SNM codefendants in the courtroom. Baca’s attorneys objected, saying the fears that he would send “nefarious” “coded messages” to the others were unsubstantiated and unfair.

Defense attorneys also disputed that Baca was the purported SNM leader, saying he has spent years in solitary confinement because of death threats made by the SNM.

Instead, Baca was seated separately from the other defendants in a corner at the front of the courtroom. He was flanked by his defense team and several security officers, not far from the judge.