Noem's death penalty in the case of del Mar exceeds previous convictions

On Saturday morning after the Thanksgiving Festival in 2022, a Panga, which was piloted by two cousins ​​from Baja California, returned the coast on Imperial Beach. The cousins ​​and five of the undocumented immigrants, who transported them, certainly made it to the beach, but three others drowned.

The cousins ​​were finally sentenced to less than five years in federal powers for their role in fatal mishap. Both are to be released from prison in 2026.

Their fate is in strong contrast to the punishment of the US security of the homeland protection authority, Kristi Noem, who was recommended this week for the two alleged smugglers who are charged with the Panga, which corrected on Monday morning near DEL Mar, and missed three people and a 10-year-old girl.

“I will … ask the Attorney General to apply for the death penalty in this case,” said NoEM in an explanation on Tuesday evening. “The Ministry of Homeland Protection will not tolerate this criminal spoilage or ruthless disregard for human life.”

Ultimately, the US Attorney General Pam Bondi will be responsible for deciding whether to seek the death penalty against Jesus Ivan Rodriguez Leyva, 36, and Julio Cesar Zuniga Luna, 30, and Julio Cesar Zuniga Luna.

In the southern district of California, which covers San Diego and the imperial counties, the hardest punishment in such a case in such a case seems to be the 18-year-old sentence in the past ten years, which was handed over to a boat captain in May 2021 near Point Loma, according to a review of cases in which the deaths with smuggling were involved. A man who led a group of 14 migrants through an underground drainage pipe, which led to drown his brother and his colleague and the almost loud wife of a migrant woman, was only sentenced to three years and nine months in prison.

“Cases should be decided on the facts, not depending on which administration is in power,” said the defender of San Diego, Tommy VU, who does not represent none of the accused. “I hope that (the Ministry of Justice) treats this case like another case and is not put under pressure, which (Noem) says.”

A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice and a spokesman for the US public prosecutor's office in San Diego refused to comment on Noem's request.

On her first day in February, Bondi spent a memorandum to federal prosecutors that cancel the Moratorium of the Biden administration for federal executions.

“Without any significant mitigating circumstances, the public prosecutor is expected to be present in cases in which extraterrestrials are illegally present in the United States, the murder of a law enforcement officer and in the United States,” says the public prosecutor, who will catch up with the death penalty, “said memorandum.

The public prosecutor identified Rodriguez and Zuniga as Mexican citizens. It is not believed that both were authorized to be in the USA

Defender Gerald McFadden, who was assigned by the court to represent Rodriguez, said on Thursday when he had reached by phone that he had not yet met with his client, but wanted to meet him that afternoon. McFadden said that he did not yet know enough details about the case to discuss it, and refused to comment on the death penalty against his client.

A defender who represents Zuniga did not respond to news that striving for a comment.

Both defendants appeared in court on Friday morning due to planned hearing, which usually contain arguments about why they should be held in custody or released in the bond while waiting for the process. But the lawyers of both men asked for additional time to prepare, and a judge set new hearings for the following week. No additional details about the case were discussed.

Rodriguez and Zuniga each look three counts against immigrants without papers, which leads to death, that everyone has a maximum prison sentence in prison or in the death penalty. However, the cases of death penalties for states are rare and the review process is extensive. The decision to apply for the death penalty would require Bondi after the US public prosecutor's office in San Diego and civil servants at the highest level of the Ministry of Justice.

The federal government's statements are also rare, although according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, only 50 have been carried out since 1927.

But 13 of these 50 were carried out in a strong contrast to the four federal executions carried out between 1958 and 2020 during the first term of office by President Donald Trump in the past six months. Among the executed Brandon Bernard, a man from Texas, who was 18 when he was on the Murd -Murde -Murd -Murd -Murkt from 1998. Your still living baby out of her body.

Former President Joe Biden campaigned for the promise to abolish the federal death penalty, but never acted for it. Instead, his Attorney General published a moratorium at the beginning of his term, and last year Biden changed the penalties of 37 of the 40 occupants of the Federal Death Row. The three, who did not receive any commutations, were all mass murderers – Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who bombed the Boston Marathon in 2013, killed three and hundreds of wounded; Dylann Roof, a white man who killed nine communities in a black church in South Carolina in 2015; and Robert Bowers, who murdered eleven churches in the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018.

No federal executions are currently planned, but last month Bondi instructed the public prosecutor to apply for the death penalty for the first time during Trump's second term. The command was aimed at Luigi Mangione, who was suspected in December to kill Unitedhealthcare -CARE Brian Thompson.

Bondi's memo, which the Moratorium of the bidea era has lifted for executions, also instructed a committee to check all open cases in which the Ministry of Justice applied for the death penalty against authorized accused during the bid administration. In San Diego, this would probably include the decision not to have been caught up with the death penalty against Matthew Taylor Coleman, a suspected conspiracy theorist who was accused of killing his two small children in Mexico.

While the longest prison sentence for a smuggling death in San Diego is the 18 years of the captain of the Point Loma boat accident, most local smuggling cases have led to shorter punishments, even if more people die or are permanently injured. One of the men who coordinated a smuggling attempt in which 13 migrants were dead when their vehicle was involved in a collision near Calexico was sentenced to 15 years in prison. A woman who crashed during the transport of five migrants and paralyzes two dead, a brain fat and one from the waist was sentenced to eight years in prison.

At the beginning of this year, a federal jury in Texas sentenced two men in connection with the death of 53 migrants who were integrated into a half -shear in 2022. Five others had previously known to be connected in modern US history in modern US history in modern US history. All seven facial offers in prison if they are convicted.

“There are improvements in the convict guidelines when death or serious physical injuries occur,” said VU, the defender and partner at Stitt Vu Trial Lawyers, about differences in the punishments. “The guidelines for the conviction make up more difficult factors … but in the end it is a few years, not a swing of life or death.”

If the prosecutors obtained the death penalty against Rodriguez and Zuniga, they have to do this before the process. There is still no deadline for this decision, but a judge could set a deadline in the future.