Gang members cite coercion in request for new trial over slayings of 2 teen boys

(CN) — Five members of a Virginia gang affiliated with MS-13 argued on appeal Tuesday they deserved a new trial in the gruesome killing of two teenage boys.

A panel for the Fourth Circuit seemed skeptical of the arguments, instead focusing their questions on a sentencing issue raised by one of the defendants.

The defendants — Ronald Herrera-Contreras, Pablo Velasco-Barrera, Henry Zelaya-Martinez, Duglas Ramirez-Ferrara and Elmer Zelaya-Martinez — were found guilty after an eight-week trial in 2022 of murdering a 17-year-old boy and a 14-year-old boy on behalf of the View Locos Salvatrucha clique.

The clique was an affiliate of La Mara Salvatrucha, more commonly known as MS-13, an international street gang notorious for using violence to intimidate rival gangs and further its criminal enterprise.

A jury determined the defendants lured the older boy, Edvin Eduard Escobar Mendez, to a gang meeting on Aug. 28, 2016, at a northern Virginia park, where they butchered him with knives, a machete and a pick axe.

The younger boy, Sergio Arita Anthony Triminio, was stabbed to death a few weeks later in the same park after he began to ask questions about Mendez’s death.

The defendants recorded part of Triminio’s assault and the cellphone video was later recovered by law enforcement officials in California. Herrera-Contreras agreed to help authorities find the teenagers’ bodies, which were buried in the park, after he was arrested in an unrelated case.

Eleven defendants were indicted in the murders, but only the five stood trial. They were found guilty on eight counts, including murder in aid of racketeering activity and kidnapping resulting in death, and sentenced to life in prison.

Paul Vangellow, an attorney from Falls Church, Virginia, represented the defendants at Tuesday’s hearing. His clients argue the trial judge erred by denying a motion to add a jury instruction on duress.

The prosecutors contend the defendants killed the teens to further their standing in the gang, but the defendants say MS-13 leaders used violence to coerce them into participating in the crimes.

If they had not killed the teens, they would have faced a similar fate, Vangellow said.

“That video shows a person being chopped up into an unidentifiable bloody mess,” the attorney said. “And those present are within striking distance of somebody wielding a machete.”

Alexander Blanchard, assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said the Fourth Circuit has ruled repeatedly that a general fear of reprisal was not sufficient to prove duress. A defendant must provide evidence he faced an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury, which he said did not exist in this case.

U.S. Circuit Judge Marvin Quattlebaum Jr. pointed out that every MS-13 gang member charged with a crime could argue they were coerced under the defendants’ argument.

“It sounds like you’re saying in all this gang activity — the way that gang culture works — you’re automatically entitled to duress — that you don’t have any role in deciding,” the Donald Trump appointee said.

Vangellow responded that he has represented members of MS-13 in criminal cases where the judge allowed the defendant to put forth a duress defense.

U.S. Circuit Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, a Ronald Reagan appointee, dismissed a separate argument about the admissibility of the video depicting the attack.

The defendants argue the gruesome video prejudiced the jury against them, but Wilkinson said that excluding such critical evidence would turn the trial into a “one-sided affair.”

“You want to disable the government from putting on actus reus evidence and say: The more horrible these things are, the less you can talk about it,” Wilkinson said. “What kind of trial is that?”

The circuit judges seemed more amenable to Zelaya-Martinez’s arguments.

His attorney, Paul Beers of Glenn, Feldmann, Darby & Goodlatte in Roanoke, Virginia, filed a separate brief in which his client says he deserves a new sentencing hearing because of two issues that arose in the judge’s orders.

The judge first failed to cite all the discretionary conditions of Zelaya-Martinez’s supervised release during his hearing. The court then included a requirement for the defendant to pay for rehabilitation if he were released on probation — a condition that was not mentioned during the hearing.

Zelaya-Martinez was unlikely to earn supervised release since he faced a life sentence, but he argues the errors opened the door for a new sentencing hearing where he could argue the constitutionality of his sentence.

“It’s a brand new day,” Beers said.

Blanchard conceded a sentencing error justified a new hearing.

U.S. Circuit Judge Nicole Berner, a Joe Biden appointee, rounded out the panel.

Follow @SteveGarrisonPC