Drug ringleader sentenced to 21 years in prison
Clad in khaki scrubs with block letters reading “INMATE” across his back, Jose Govea-Jimenez shuffled into a Franklin County Common Pleas courtroom to face a judge and learn his fate Thursday morning.
He looked over his right shoulder and shot an icy glare toward a few Columbus police narcotics investigators watching from the back bench of the courtroom. He softened his expression as he turned his attention to a judge to say through a Spanish interpreter, “I love this country and I apologize to whoever I have harmed.” He said he had made a mistake.
Govea-Jimenez, a Mexican national, will be a senior citizen when he’s done with a 21-year prison term handed down by Judge Kimberly Cocroft. He’ll then be subject to postrelease control and will have a hold placed on him by U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement.
Officials said GoveaJimenez, 48, of Lewis Center, was moving as much as 100 kilos of heroin — about 220 pounds—into Columbus each month and working with a Mexican cartel as the ringleader of a Columbus-area drug operation.
“There’s no way we could ever calculate the damage your actions have caused,” Cocroft told Govea-Jimenez during sentencing.
During the investigation, Columbus police seized 25 kilos — about 55 pounds — of heroin, with an estimated street value of $2.5 million, and arrested four others associated with the drug operation.
Operations were fluid, with locations changing all the time and included homes and storage units in Columbus, Hilliard and Lewis Center, investigators said. Detectives searched the locations nearly a year ago, seizing 11 firearms and more than $20,000.
Drugs were moving from Mexico to Columbus for resale, according to investigators. Govea-Jimenez came to the United States on a visa that allowed him to be only 25 miles north of the border. But his attorney, Thomas Lininger, told the court that GoveaJimenez had lived in the Columbus area for 17 years. His visa is now expired. He had no prior criminal history.
Govea-Jimenez pleaded guilty to charges of engaging in a corrupt activity and two counts of trafficking in drugs.
The case was challenging to put together because most people refused to testify against Govea-Jimenez, Assistant Prosecutor Dan Stanley said. People feared their families would be killed in Mexico if they testified here, he said.
Jennifer Lynn Guy, 33, one of the co-defendants in the case, did testify against Govea-Jimenez to shorten her prison sentence. She told the court she purchased heroin from him to sell. Guy, of the Northwest Side, said she met him through her husband and had known him only for a couple of months before she was arrested. She purchased one to two kilos (about 2 to 4 pounds) per week, she told the court.
Cocroft told GoveaJimenez, who complained that some of his charges were overblown, that his apology did not seem sincere.
His behavior, the judge said, “added to an already difficult situation” in a community where heroin has taken such a strong hold.