By SOPHIA TAREEN
CHICAGO (AP) — The fate of a Chicago man accused of using Snapchat to offer a $10,000 bounty on the life of a top Border Patrol commander rested in a federal jury’s hands Thursday.
Juan Espinoza Martinez, a 37-year-old carpenter, was charged with a single count of murder-for-hire in the first criminal trial out of the Chicago area immigration crackdown. Testimony lasted mere hours in the federal trial that’s the latest test of the Trump administration’s credibility on federal surges that have played out from Minnesota to Maine.
At the heart of the government’s case are Snapchat messages sent from Espinoza Martinez to his younger brother and a friend who turned out to be a government informant. One read in part “10k if u take him down,” along with a picture of Gregory Bovino, a Border Patrol official who has led aggressive crackdowns nationwide, including last year in the Chicago area.
“Those words do not indicate that this was a joke,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Yonan told jurors during closing arguments. “Those words have meaning. They are not innocent and harmless words.”
But defense attorneys said the government didn’t show any evidence against Espinoza Martinez who sent the messages as “neighborhood gossip” after coming home from work and unwinding with beers. He didn’t follow up on the exchanges and had only a few dollars in his bank account.
“Sending a message about gossip that you heard in the neighborhood, it’s not murder for hire,” his defense attorney Dena Singer told jurors. “It’s not a federal crime.”
If convicted, Espinoza Martinez faces up to 10 years in prison.
Prosecutors accused Espinoza Martinez of being “fixated and obsessed” with Bovino and cited other messages where he criticized the crackdown.
Espinoza Martinez was arrested in October as the Chicago area was in the federal spotlight. Protests, arrests and tense standoffs with immigration agents were common throughout the city of 2.7 million and surrounding suburbs, especially in the city’s heavily Mexican Little Village neighborhood where Espinoza Martinez lived.
He did not testify at his trial.
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“I didn’t threaten anyone,” he told investigators, interchanging English and Spanish at times in the interview. “I’m not saying that I was telling them to do it.”
Born in Mexico, he’s lived in Chicago for years but doesn’t have citizenship.
The Department of Homeland Security touted Espinoza Martinez’s arrest on social media with unredacted photos of his face, referring to him as a “depraved” gang member. Bovino has held the case up as an example of the increasing dangers faced by federal agents. Prosecutors included Yonan, the second-highest ranking federal prosecutor in the Chicago region.
But several federal lawsuits in Chicago have fueled skepticism about DHS’s narratives. Of the roughly 30 criminal cases stemming from Operation Midway Blitz, charges have been dismissed or dropped in about half. In a notable lawsuit that forced Bovino to sit for depositions, a federal judge found he lied under oath including about alleged gang threats.
Nationwide, dozens of criminal cases tied to immigration operations have also crumbled.
Bovino did not testify at the trial.
Federal prosecutors initially referred to Espinoza Martinez as a “ranking member” of the Latin Kings, but their lack of evidence led U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow to bar testimony on the Chicago street gang at trial. According to the criminal complaint, Espinoza Martinez allegedly sent messages on behalf of the gang to other gang members.
At trial, there were minor mentions of the gang, including Espinoza Martinez saying in his interview that he had nothing to do with the Latin Kings. His brother, Oscar, testified that he took the Snapchat messages as a joke and something he’d already seen on Facebook.
Singer pointed out holes in the government’s case, including in the testimony of their first witness Adrian Jimenez.
The 44-year-old owns a construction company and had been in touch with Espinoza Martinez over Snapchat about work. Unknown to Espinoza Martinez, he had also worked as a paid government informant over the years and shared the Snapchats with a federal investigator.
Jimenez, who suffers from back problems, walked slowly with a limp to the witness chair and needed help getting up.
“Would you solicit for hire an individual that was in that much pain and could barely walk?” Singer said to jurors. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
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