Newly disclosed evidence leads to lenient plea deal for accused Mexican Mafia lawyer
Newly disclosed evidence leads to lenient plea deal for accused Mexican Mafia lawyer
Prosecutors are recommending no prison and no probation for Gabriel Zandejas-Chavez, who pleaded guilty Thursday to misprision of a felony.
A lawyer accused of using his access to prisons to help his Mexican Mafia clients extort and murder rivals recently accepted an unusually lenient plea deal involving no prison and no probation amid claims that prosecutors wrongly withheld potentially exculpatory evidence.
Gabriel Zandejas-Chavez pleaded guilty Thursday to a single count of misprision of a felony for failing to notify authorities about an organized crime conspiracy that prosecutors say involved the distribution of drugs in Los Angeles County jails by high-ranking Mexican Mafia members and associates.
The plea deal is a big change in approach from prosecutors, who had planned to retry Chavez alongside three others facing their first trial, including Mexican Mafia leader Jose “Fox” Landa-Rodriguez, after a jury couldn’t decide on a verdict in his first trial in August 2022.
Prosecutors secured a new indictment last February that charged Chavez with four felonies, including racketeering conspiracy and conspiracy to distribute drugs, and included new allegations linking him to murders committed by Mexican Mafia members.
The new indictment also said a member in 2017 ordered Chavez to be killed “for overstepping his authority in the Mexican Mafia,” and it repeated previously disclosed details about Chavez traveling to high-security prisons to deliver messages about Mexican Mafia business. That includes an extortion plot against the Mongols Motorcycle Club that involved forcing the group to pay $100,000 to be removed from the Mexican Mafia’s kill-on-sight list but required broad consensus from the Mafia’s incarcerated membership.
Chavez faced a potential sentence of life in prison if convicted, but prosecutors in July released information to his attorney, Meghan Blanco, that she said should have been given to her long before the first trial. The information included notes about meetings with prison informants that prosecutors previously said never occurred. Blanco filed a motion to dismiss Chavez’s charges that said the new info contradicts testimony from the first trial and suggests “people unrelated to the charged conspiracy” murdered two victims in the indictment.
“All the newly produced information appears to have been obtained from the same central and confidential files that the [U.S. Attorney’s Office] reviewed between July 31 and August 2, 2022 — at the outset of Mr. Chavez’s first trial. The documents predate the government’s discovery review of those files,” Blanco wrote in her 25-page motion, filed Aug. 3.
Prosecutors responded by saying they “fell short” in their review of California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation files and “missed documents that should have been produced prior to defendant’s first trial.”
“However, the relevant documents have now been produced, with ample time for defendant to use the documents at his retrial,” according to the 68-page opposition to dismissal from Assistant U.S. Attorneys Shawn Nelson, Gregg Marmaro and Daniel Weiner.
On Sept. 5, U.S. District Judge George Wu in Los Angeles ordered he be tried separately from the three other defendants, at the suggestion of prosecutors. He also ordered prosecutors to disclose by Sept. 25 any other “Brady materials,” which refers to the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court Brady v. Maryland ruling regarding exculpatory evidence, and he gave prosecutors and Blanco until Sept. 12 “to file a joint document re remedies of the violations.”
Chavez signed the plea agreement on Sept. 12, and prosecutors filed it the next day. They also filed the new misprision of a felony charge.
They wanted Judge Wu to sentence Chavez on Thursday, but he declined and scheduled sentencing for Nov. 4 at 8 a.m.
“I just want to make sure that there’s nothing that is going to fly by me that I should consider,” Wu said, but he said Chavez can now stop wearing the ankle monitor he’s worn since 2018.
Before Chavez pleaded guilty on Thursday, Wu asked what the conviction could mean for his California State Bar license. Blanco said they’ve spoken with “ethics attorneys” and “are operating under the assumption” he’ll be disbarred.
Hung jury leads to mistrial
Chavez taught high school chemistry before he earned his law license from the Irvine University College of Law in Cerritos, California, and passed the California State Bar in 2008.
He isn’t the first lawyer who’s been charged in Los Angeles federal court with helping the Mexican Mafia: A jury in 2012 convicted disbarred attorney Isaac Guillen of money laundering and racketeering charges for his work with the Mafia and its underlying 18th Street gang. He was sentenced to nearly seven years in prison.
According to the indictment, Chavez appears to have taken Guillen’s place: His charges describe work with the Mexican Mafia beginning in January 2014.
Blanco told the jury in the first trial that Chavez has been falsely accused of crimes by Mafia members looking for leniency in their own criminal cases. She said his prominence within the gang stems from his prowess as a lawyer who helped free Robert “Peanut Butter” Ruiz, a longtime Mafia leader serving a life sentence for drugs.
But prosecutors said Chavez’s work went far beyond acceptable attorney work: Assistant U.S. Attorney Gregory Bernstein described in his opening statement in 2022 how Chavez helped smuggle drugs into the jails, hunted down informants and obtained paperwork through his status as a licensed lawyer that aided the Mexican Mafia’s decision-making regarding violence and its control of lucrative drug markets.
Chavez also hosted Mexican Mafia meetings at his law office as well as his family’s Mexican food restaurant, and members sometimes referred to him as “la corbata,” which is Spanish for “the tie,” said Bernstein, who is now on the U.S. Department of Justice’s special counsel team prosecuting Donald Trump. Bernstein did the first trial with Marmaro and Assistant U.S. Attorney Keith Ellison.
Luis “Hefty” Garcia, a former Sureño gangster and Mexican Mafia ally, was the prosecution’s star witness. He testified that Chavez provided a crucial bridge between members incarcerated in different prisons, relaying messages about potential murder plots and other key business decisions.
Garcia said Chavez relayed messages from him and Landa-Rodriguez to influential Mafia leaders imprisoned at the maximum security Pelican Bay State Prison about politics within the gruop and on the streets, including possible assaults and murders.
“When we discussed these things, it’s like if me and another person were discussing this cup of water here,” Garcia testified, referencing a court-provided water cup. “It’s just a regular conversation.”
Jurors also heard from Jean Pierre Espino, a security specialist at ADX Florence in Colorado, the highest security federal prison in the United States, who testified that Chavez’s already suspicious visits with Mexican Mafia inmates took on a more criminal appearance after three notes were discovered in a visiting room toilet he’d used.
Jurors saw the notes and watched soundless surveillance video of Chavez meeting individually with inmates, including influential Mexican Mafia member Francisco “Puppet” Martinez, who appeared to pass papers back and forth with Chavez. Jurors also saw records of Chavez putting money on Martinez’s prison account, and they saw letters that Chavez mailed to a Mexican Mafia inmate at ADX, including one titled “Not a Coded Message” that Espino testified appeared to be a coded message.
Chavez also took the unusual step of testifying in his own defense, and he described how an informant threatened to kill him and his daughter if he didn’t comply with Mexican Mafia orders. After 14 days of trial and two days of deliberation, jurors split 6-6 on racketeering and drug conspiracy charges as well as a heroin charge, and 3-9 in favor of not guilty on a methamphetamine charge.
Prosecutors began preparing for a new trial immediately. Their exhibit list spans 48 pages, and they filed pre-trial motions in July and August that indicated they were on track for an October trial.
One asked Judge Wu to prohibit Chavez from presenting a “duress defense,” which prosecutors said presented in the first trial when he testified “that a government witness threatened him and his daughter.”
“The Court struck defendant’s testimony, but the bell could not be un-rung, particularly because defense counsel and defendant continued to insinuate about the purported threat,” according to the July 26 motion.
Prosecutors also asked Judge Wu to impanel a jury that would be anonymous to the public “to protect jurors and prevent interference with the judicial process.” Their motion cited news coverage of the first trial, including my coverage and my large Twitter following. Judge Wu granted both motions on Aug. 29. He also heard argument on Blanco’s two Brady motions.
The first, filed on July 26, addressed newly released information from prosecutors, including regarding two murders, that Blanco said would have increased the odds of acquittal in the first trial exponentially.”
“At one point during Mr. Chavez’s first trial, counsel moved for a mistrial after the government elicited damming testimony from CI-5 concerning DC’s murder, a topic that Mr. Chavez had received almost no pretrial discovery. The motion was denied,” Blanco wrote. “Evidence produced in the last few months conflicts with testimony the government elicited from CI-5 regarding GE and DC’s murders, including the government’s timeline of events, the reasons GE and DC may have been killed, and Mr. Chavez’s contact (which was none) with individuals who claim to have been personally responsible for ordering assaults on people working for AE.”
The second motion a week later included more details about the new information as well as Blanco’s emails with prosecutors in which she requested all information regarding the murders and the “stepping down” of a Mexican Mafia member that was a key focus of trial. She specifically told them to check the state prison files for the informants and said she needed confirmation “that someone has reviewed pertinent central and confidential files for relevant and exculpatory information.”
“At times, the government went so far as to characterize Mr. Chavez’s requests for Brady information as ‘fishing expeditions,’” Blanco wrote.
Judge Wu didn’t grant her mistrial requests related to the evidence, Blanco said, but “the government’s actions in knowingly suppressing materially exculpatory evidence, and then lying to the Court about doing so, had the same effect as if the Court had granted Mr. Chavez’s requests: they resulted in a mistrial.”
“Had the government produced Brady material as required, the jury likely would have returned with a verdict of acquittal,” Blanco wrote.
Prosecutors in response said, “Minor inconsistencies do not automatically lead to the conclusion that the cooperating witnesses were lying.”
“Despite broad claims of ‘conflicts’ and ‘inconsistencies,’ the defense fails to identify with particularity anything that would have specifically led the jury to unanimously find him not guilty,” according to the opposition.
Blanco supplemented her motion on Aug. 22 with a five-page filing titled, “Notice of Additional Brady Information the USAO Possesses But Has Lied About Possessing and Has Not Produced.” She cited information from another case that said the U.S. Attorney’s Office determined two men were responsible for a murder that prosecutors in Chavez’s case attribute to “unknown coconspirators.”
“The scope of the government’s Brady violations and their steadfast determination to cover up those violations, even now, undermines confidence in the prosecution. This case must be dismissed,” Blanco wrote.
Prosecutors said the other case regarding the murder is a Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office prosecution, but they recently realized a separate federal investigation may be a way of obtaining materials on the murder and obtained them through the assistant U.S. attorney assigned to the case.
“Far from hiding or concealing this material, the government referenced it,” in a filing in another defendant’s dismissal motion, prosecutors wrote, which is sealed.
Judge Wu rejected Blanco’s request for discovery related to the other case during the Aug. 29 hearing. He also ordered supplemental briefing from Blanco regarding the Brady motion as well as opposition from prosecutors. Both filings are sealed.
Judge Wu issued a tentative ruling regarding Blanco’s Brady dismissal motions, but it is not publicly available. According to a transcript of the Sept. 5 hearing, he “did not find that the government intentionally failed to comply with Brady.”
“I found that there was a failure to provide documents — voluminous documents, but I did not say that that was intentional on the part of the government,” Wu said.
The judge said he “will agree there clearly was something that can give rise to a Brady violation, but technically, in order for it to be a complete Brady violation, it has to be — there has to be substantial prejudice.”
A trial-setting conference for Landa-Rodriguez and the two other defendants, Alvino Munoz and Samantha Rivera, is scheduled for Nov. 21.
Chavez’s 19-page plea agreement’s two-paragraph factual basis does not mention murder or extortion but says Chavez knew “on or about April 8, 2014” while visiting the jail that an inmate was engaged “racketeering conspiracy.”
“On April 8, 2014, defendant did an affirmative act to further and conceal the ongoing commission of the federal felony described above, including by using hand gestures instead of verbal communication, by speaking in coded language, and by surreptitiously writing down the names of members of the criminal enterprise of which defendant knew the inmate and others were engaged.”
The agreement gives Chavez a standard sentencing range of zero to six months in prison under U.S. Sentencing Commission Guidelines.
“The parties agree to recommend that the Court impose a sentence of time-served, no term of supervised released, and $100 special assessment,” according to the document.
Chavez declined to speak with a reporter after court on Thursday, then left the courthouse
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