MANHATTAN (CN) — A federal judge in New York City on Thursday denied ex-Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández's motion for a new trial, despite his claims that a government witness lied at his criminal trial earlier this year.
Jurors convicted the former president on narco-conspiracy charges in March. They found him guilty of working with cartel-backed drug traffickers while in office between 2014 and 2022 to shuttle cocaine through Honduras, much of it bound for the United States.
Hernández argued in his motion for new trial that a government witness, Drug Enforcement Administration Analyst Jennifer Taul, misled jurors on a key piece of context. She said at trial that cocaine trafficking through Honduras increased during Hernández's two terms of office, while the former president argued it actually went down.
To support this argument he cited the testimony of Trinity College professor Dario Euraque, an expert in Honduran social and economic history, in the related federal criminal drug trafficking case United States v. Geovanny Fuentes Ramirez. In that case Euraque confirmed an estimation that the amount of cocaine stopping in Honduras en route to the U.S. dropped by about 82% while Hernández was in office.
"The government declined to call Dr. Euraque at this trial to avoid him repeating this damaging testimony. While that was the government’s prerogative, it was improper to rely on contradictory and irreconcilable testimony from Ms. Taul and argue it to the jury," Hernández argued in his new trial motion.
U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel doubted that claim.
In his Thursday ruling denying Hernández a new trial, the George W. Bush-appointed judge offered up a number of figures that favored the allegedly dishonest Taul's take over Professor Euraque's, and ultimately decided the matter was irrelevant.
Jurors convicted Hernández of conspiring with drug traffickers, Castel reasoned, regardless of whether total cocaine trafficking in Honduras increased or decreased while he was president.
"Evidence that cocaine trafficking through Honduras in the aggregate went down during Hernandez’s administration would only be relevant to show that Hernandez enacted anti-drug trafficking policies and acted in conformity with those prior 'good acts' — a prohibited propensity inference," he wrote.
Euraque did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the issue.
In his motion, Hernández also argued that Manhattan was an improper venue for his case. He named the Southern District of Florida as the proper place, since he first landed in Fort Lauderdale after being brought to the U.S. from Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
According to U.S. law, "the trial of all offenses begun or committed upon the high seas, or elsewhere out of the jurisdiction of any particular state or district, shall be in the district in which the offender, or any one of two or more joint offenders, is arrested or is first brought."
Castel waved away this argument as well, pointing out that Hernández's time in south Florida amounted to a half-hour layover en route to New York's Westchester County Airport. Hernández knew about the Florida stop prior to his trial, Castel said, but never bothered to challenge the government's preferred trial venue before his conviction.
"Hernandez’s newly-raised challenge to the venue jury instruction is not that it misled the jury as to the correct legal standard or did not adequately inform the jury as to the law on venue," Castel wrote. "Rather, his challenge is based on the court’s reliance on the stipulation that Hernandez knowingly and voluntarily entered into with the government ... this argument has been waived, and does not entitle him to a new trial."
At trial in February and early March, multiple convicted drug traffickers testified to paying cash bribes to Hernández via proxy, and in return getting protection for their operations.
Honduran military personnel escorted cocaine trucks headed north from South America to the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico; some traffickers enjoyed protection from capture and property confiscation by Honduran law enforcement, and from extradition to the United States on criminal charges; and some received government contracts for shell companies used to launder the cartels’ drug money.
Hernández himself denied ever meeting with drug traffickers or accepting bribes, presenting himself as a reformer committed to ending drug trafficking in Honduras.
Jurors thought otherwise. They deliberated for less than a day before finding him guilty of all counts, including drug conspiracy, weapons possession and lying to the Drug Enforcement Administration. He faces sentencing on June 26.
Hernández's attorney Sabrina Shroff declined to offer comment on the development.
Follow @djbyrnes1
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.
