United States v. Luna

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff, v. GENARO GARCIA LUNA, Defendant.

No. 19-cr-576 (BMC)

United States District Court, E.D. New York

August 7, 2024

MEMORANDUM DECISION AND ORDER

COGAN DISTRICT JUDGE.

Defendant Genaro Garcia Luna, former head of Mexico's Federal Investigation Agency (“AFT”), was convicted of participating in a continuing criminal enterprise; conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute cocaine cocaine importation conspiracy; international cocaine distribution; and making false statements. In essence, the Government proved that Luna accepted bribes to facilitate and profit from the activities of the Sinaloa Cartel (the “Cartel”), Mexico's largest and most sophisticated drug trafficking organization. The trial took five weeks. It involved testimony from senior Cartel members and its accountant, convicted Mexican government officials non-corrupted Mexican police officers, and U.S. law enforcement officers who had worked in Mexico during the events at issue.

The case is before the Court on defendant's motion for a new trial. The primary claims on the motion are Brady violations and alleged false testimony by Government witnesses. The motion fails for numerous reasons, including that it is made against a backdrop - as defendant virtually concedes - of his unsuccessful efforts to bribe inmates at the Metropolitan Detention Center (“MDC”) after his trial to create false evidence, which was submitted on this motion without the knowledge of his lawyers (that is, his lawyers knew they were submitting the evidence he obtained, but they didn't know it was false). In addition, much of the “newly discovered” evidence consists of facts that were known or accessible to defendant prior to trial.

The principle points defendant makes are addressed below. The few others are entirely without substance and are denied for the reasons stated in the government's opposition.

I. The Affidavit of Edgardo Mejia

Edgardo Mejia has nothing to do with this case, except he has submitted an affidavit in support of defendant's motion. Mejia has been in custody at the MDC since January of 2018. He was charged with sexual exploitation of a child; coercion and enticement; three counts of receipt of child pornography; and receipt of possession of child pornography. He pled guilty to sexually exploiting an eleven-year-old girl and her two-year-old niece by having the eleven-year-old girl create pictures of herself and her niece engaged in sex acts and sending them to him. He is awaiting sentencing. Two months after submitting his affidavit in support of defendant's motion for a new trial, he was diagnosed with a psychotic disorder with hallucinations due to a known physiological condition. According to Mejia's Presentence Investigation Report, his Sentencing Guidelines start off at life imprisonment, but his statutory maximum is 360 months.

In his affidavit, Mejia avers that he was housed at the MDC with an individual named Juan Carlos Nava Valencia, known as “El Tigre.” Mejia further avers that he observed El Tigre with a cell phone, which is of course contraband in prison. He further avers that El Tigre told him that he (El Tigre) had talked on the cell phone to his brother Oscar and another individual referred to as “Edgar,” who turned out to be Edgar Veytia. Oscar and Veytia were both cooperating witnesses who testified against defendant at trial. Veytia was housed with Mejia in 2022.

According to Mejia, Veytia told him (Mejia) that Veytia was in “constant contact” with El Tigre and his brother Oscar over contraband cell phones. Veytia called the Assistant U.S. Attorneys “stupid;” that they “would believe anything I say;” and that Veytia was “going to screw” defendant.

In response to the Mejia affidavit that defendant submitted, the Government interviewed El Tigre, Oscar, and Veytia. The notes of those interviews directly refute each of Mejia's claims, and all but establish that the Mejia affidavit was part of defendant's effort to solicit MDC inmates to come up with this false story.

Veytia told the Government when it investigated Mejia's affidavit that he never communicated with El Tigre or Oscar via a contraband cellphone nor told anyone that he had, and that he met El Tigre only once at the MDC when they were both briefly in the same holding room prior to an attorney visit in which they had no conversation but to introduce themselves. He also stated that he had never met or spoken to Oscar. He outright denied making the statements attributed to him in the Mejia affidavit. He stated that he did not even know that Oscar would be testifying against defendant until shortly before trial when it was publicly reported. He also denied having any communications with El Tigre or Oscar through a third party.

Oscar similarly stated to the Government that he had never met or spoken to Veytia and, indeed, Veytia's name was not even familiar to him. He denied communicating with El Tigre by cell phone or passing messages amongst the three of them.

El Tigre stated he had never spoken on a contraband cell phone to Oscar of anyone named “Edgar” and that he does not know Veytia, but had met him once in 2018 or 2019 in a holding cell prior to an attorney visit.

Mejia's own dubious background or the consistent denials from El Tigre, Oscar, and Veytia would probably each be enough reason to reject Mejia's affidavit in light of the stringent standard for a motion for a new trial. But there is much, much more. In the course of investigating the alleged statements in the Mejia affidavit, the Government discovered that defendant had contacted other inmates at the MDC and asked them to sign an affidavit telling substantially the same story as Mejia in exchange for millions of dollars. El Tigre alerted the Government to defendant's MDC scheme and identified the other individuals involved.

In fact, the Government didn't know it until its investigation, but it already had this information in-house. El Tigre's lawyer had communicated the information to another Assistant U.S. Attorney. With the loop closed, the prosecution team in this case interviewed the individual involved (John Doe #2), who had not only made contemporaneous notes of his conversation with defendant (submitted with the Government's opposition to defendant's motion), but had surreptitiously recorded the conversation (also submitted with its opposition to the motion), using - yes - a contraband cell phone.

The notes and the recording are just as damning as they could be. This was a clear scheme by defendant to obstruct justice through bribery - defendant started out with a $500,000 offer of a bribe, but to overcome John Doe #2's hesitation, the offer ultimately went up to $2 million. Defendant disclosed to John Doe #2 that he wanted to involve another inmate, John Doe #1, to give the same story to corroborate Mejia. He also disclosed to John Doe #2 that the Mejia affidavit was in fact false.

Defendant said he wanted more than one person backing up the fake story so it would be more convincing. Part of this, defendant made clear to John Doe #2, was that the story had to be carefully constructed so that he could fool his attorney into believing it. Defendant stated in John #2's recording that the individual telling the story had to “say something convincing in order to convince Cesar [de Castro, defendant's attorney].”

In his reply brief in support of the instant motion, defendant has little to say about the Government's investigation. About the most he can do is complain that the Government seems to have done, in his view, a better job of investigating Mejia's affidavit than of investigating other witnesses whose credibility he is attacking (again) on this motion. He also complains that this is just the word of the cooperators against the word of Mejia. But that's not true. There are contemporaneous notes from John Doe #2 and recordings of his conversations with defendant. The obstruction effort is clear.

Although the principle of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus does not apply on this motion, the Government is correct that I must approach the motion with at least a modicum of skepticism in light of defendant's attempt to corrupt it. So should his lawyers, as it seems clear that they were nearly as much a target of defendant's attempted obstruction as the Government and the Court.

II. The “Vetting” Documents

Defendant attempted to introduce at trial laudatory statements and opinion letters from U.S. government officials about what a great job he was doing in fighting the cartels. I excluded most of them under Fed.R.Evid. 403 because they did not go to the central issue in this case, namely, whether defendant was deceiving U.S. authorities while helping the cartels by accepting bribes, and might have confused and misled the jury. In other words, of course the United States authorities believed defendant was helping them - whether he was, or whether he was deceiving them, was the whole point of this case. In the instant motion, he has identified a few other documents that he thinks would have shown more evidence along these lines.

Defendant's motion includes a claim that the government failed to turn over, as Brady material, certain documents that show, or would have permitted an inference, that he passed a security check by the U.S. Government and that the U.S. Government concluded that he was “dedicated to fighting the cartels.” The documents do not show that, and they do not qualify as Brady materials for a host of reasons.

The first document is a Letter of Understanding (“LOU”) dated January 27, 2011, signed by defendant and the DEA's Regional Director in Mexico. It concerns a Mexican federal police unit called the Sensitive Investigation...