Mexico snares Colo. fugitives

Penal code allows prosecution there

Karen Abbott, Rocky Mountain News

Published May 21, 2005 at midnight

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Five Colorado murderers are serving prison sentences in Mexico even though their crimes were committed here.

They're locked up under a little-known procedure known as "Article IV" in the Mexican penal code.

Colorado Attorney General John Suthers, whose office handles Article IV cases, said it's likely to be used more often in the future.

"We've been getting increasingly aggressive about it," he said.

Article IV is an option when Mexico won't return a fugitive to the United States because the person could face the death penalty or life imprisonment in this country.

"It's an unacceptable notion to me that you just forget about it then," Suthers said.

Instead, U.S. prosecutors can present their case to a Mexican court. The judge reviews information presented by both sides, but no witnesses are called. If the judge convicts the defendant of committing a crime in the United States, the defendant can be confined to a Mexican prison.

Last month Suthers announced that a Mexican judge had sentenced Manuel Enrique Muela-Luna to 27 years and six months in a Mexican federal prison for the 1992 murder of Luis Armendariz, 18, near Estes Park.

U.S. authorities said Muela-Luna, who had sexually abused Armendariz in the past, shot Armendariz and burned his body after learning that Armendariz planned to move in with his pregnant girlfriend. Muela-Luna fled to Mexico and Mexican authorities arrested him there.

At a news conference announcing Muela-Luna's sentencing, Armendariz's mother stood with U.S. prosecutors and wept.

"She said she really felt like it gave her some degree of closure," said Deputy Colorado Attorney General Jason Dunn.

Suthers' predecessor, Ken Salazar, now a U.S. senator, launched a foreign prosecutions unit in 2000 after learning that California, Arizona and Texas, among other states, were using Article IV.

Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey said his office has never used the procedure in the 21 years he has been a Denver prosecutor, and he declined to discuss whether it might be used in the case of Raul Garcia-Gomez, 19, who is suspected of killing Denver police Detective Donald Young and wounding Detective John Bishop at a southwest Denver christening party on May 8.

But, Morrissey said, after learning about Article IV about a year ago he has been making arrangements for it to be used if the right case requires it.

"It's certainly an option that we'd like to have available to us," he said.

Morrissey said U.S. prosecutors have only two other options when accused murderers flee to Mexico and won't be returned: charge them with something less serious than first-degree murder so they won't face execution or life in prison, or wait for them to come back to the United States and hope they'll be caught.

Morrissey said some prosecutors might hesitate using Article IV to send a Colorado murderer to a Mexican prison.

"I think the concern is that, down there, nobody really knows what the penitentiary system is like," Morrissey said.

The other Colorado murderers serving time in Mexican prisons are:

• Jose Antonio Almeida-Olivez, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the 1994 drug-related murder in Adams County of Jose Alfredo Martinez.

• Manuel Franco-Ayala, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the 1998 drug-related murder in Pueblo County of Kenneth Tamburelli.

• Alfredo Martinez Guerra, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the 1992 murder in Morgan County of his estranged wife, Maria Luisa Montes-Lopez.

• Antonio Neave-Olguin, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison for the 1981 murder in the Fort Morgan area of his cousin, Romiro Hernandez-Silva.

Another suspect in a Colorado murder, Ramon Villalobos, has been in custody in Mexico since February and is awaiting a Mexican judge's ruling on charges that he shot Tom Avalos multiple times in a bar in Lafayette in 1987.

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