15-YEAR PENALTY ASKED IN POT TRIAL

The Defense Asks: Why Throw the Book at a Suspect Plucked From Mexico to
Tend the Crop?

The government caught up with a young Mexican man watering a marijuana
garden in rural Northern California and is hoping to put him behind bars
for at least 15 years.

Miguel Palominos is another in a parade of young Mexicans who are recruited
to tend California marijuana crops. His attorneys insist he was not told
what he was going to be doing until he "was dropped in the middle of
nowhere" in Tehama County.

Invariably, these "irrigators," as they call themselves, are the only ones
apprehended when the gardens are raided. Part of their value to the growers
is that they are expendable, easily replaced from an endless supply, known
as "throwaways" by the lawyers in the federal defender's office who wind up
representing them.

"It's what we used to call 'indentured servitude,' which is a polite phrase
for slavery," Timothy Zindel, an attorney for Palominos, told the jury in
his closing argument this week in U.S. District Court.

Defense lawyers estimate that the U.S. attorney's office in Sacramento has
prosecuted between 40 and 50 of these cases over the past decade in federal
court, where the penalties are draconian compared to state court.

If convicted on all counts, Palominos is facing a minimum 15 years in
prison. Had he been charged with cultivation in state court in Tehama
County, he would likely have been out of prison and deported by now.

Federal Defender Quin Denvir has said prosecutors tout the harsh treatment
as a deterrent. "There is no deterrent," he said. "Farm workers in this
country and people in Mexico will never hear about these cases."

For eight days, the government paid two assistant U.S. attorneys, two
assistant federal defenders, five interpreters rotating in teams of two,
U.S. District Judge William B. Shubb, and 12 jurors and two alternates to
try Palominos.

Defense attorneys Daniel Broderick and Zindel mocked the idea that
Palominos conspired to grow nearly 13,000 pot plants and that he possessed
three firearms to carry out his scheme.

"You would think the U.S. attorney's office would have better use for its
resources," Broderick, a former federal prosecutor, said outside of court.
"This has no business in federal court. I think it's statistically driven.
It's just a scalp for them and it's easy."

U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott vehemently supports the prosecutions generally
and the Palominos case specifically.

"This was a very large grow, and anybody involved would know this," he said
of the conspiracy charge against Palominos.

"Secondly, these people are armed. This isn't somebody growing a couple of
weeds in their back yard. In the past three years we've had five separate
shootings in connection with these large grows," he said.

"These operations are run by large Mexican cartels. Someone had a phony
birth certificate created for (Palominos) showing he was under 18 and
couldn't be prosecuted as an adult. That doesn't just happen.

"It's not a perfect world from our perspective. We'd love to be able to go
after the guys in Mexico who are behind all this."

Police officers in the northeast part of the state have such confidence
that federal prosecutors in Sacramento will accept cases like the one
against Palominos that a Tehama County sheriff's detective told him the day
he was arrested that he was facing a lengthy federal prison sentence.

Palominos was charged in a federal grand jury indictment with manufacturing
and conspiring to manufacture 1,000 or more plants, and possessing three
firearms - a pistol, rifle and shotgun - to carry out drug trafficking
crimes. He had none of the guns in his possession when arrested, but they
were found at the site.

The jury found him guilty Friday of manufacturing, but deadlocked on the
conspiracy and weapons charges.

The deadlock is only the second time the government has had a problem in
Sacramento securing a conviction in such a case. U.S. District Judge Frank
C. Damrell Jr. last year threw out a jury's guilty verdict, calling it "a
serious miscarriage of justice." The government's appeal is pending.

At a conference with Shubb on Wednesday, prosecutors are to request a date
for retrial of Palominos on the conspiracy and weapons counts.

Palominos, who has no formal education and cannot read, write or count in
Spanish or English, is not sure of his age but thinks he is 22. He is from
the village of Coalcoman in the western Mexican state of Michoacan, where
he has spent his whole life. His mother and two sisters depend on him for
financial support. He has no criminal record. According to court records,
trial testimony and his attorneys, this is his story:

Palominos was approached last year by an older man in his village who said
he could get him work in the United States. He was given money for a bus
ticket to Nogales, where he was met by a professional smuggler, called a
"coyote," who sneaked him into Arizona. From there, he was transported to
the marijuana garden not far from the Tehama County hamlet of Manton.

He was hired by a man known to Palominos only as "Jose," who promised him
$1,000 a month to water the plants, but said he would get no money until
Jose and the coyote had been paid for their work. Jose gave him a backpack
with a pistol in it and told him not to leave the camp and not to make a
fire at night.

Palominos believes this all occurred in June 2002, but he's not sure. When
he was arrested Aug. 5, 2002, he hadn't been paid. His wallet was empty -
no money, no identification, no pictures.

When the camp was raided, four others watering the plants and living with
him escaped.

"Everybody else knew the way out," Zindel told the jury.

Sheriff's deputies confiscated 12,997 marijuana plants.

Federal law allows someone like Palominos to be held responsible for what
others have plotted. That let prosecutors Samuel Wong and Philip Ferrari
include conspiracy and firearms charges.

Sympathy has no place in the courtroom, and the jurors were told that four
times: by Wong and Zindel in their closing arguments, by Ferrari in his
rebuttal to Zindel's closing, and by Shubb in his instructions on the law.