4 MIAMI OFFICERS CONVICTED IN COVER-UP TO WAIT FOR SENTENCING

Miami The four Miami police officers convicted of obstruction of justice
for covering up a series of police shootings will have at least a few more
weeks of freedom before they are sentenced.

Former officers Jesse Aguero, Oscar Ronda, Jorge Castello and Arturo
Beguiristain were convicted in April. U.S. District Judge Alan Gold had
been expected to sentence them on Thursday, but the judge said he wanted to
see more legal research before deciding the men's prison terms. Gold will
make his final decision Oct. 29.

On Thursday, family members and co-workers of Beguiristain, who had been
absent from a previous sentencing hearing because of emergency gall bladder
surgery, asked the judge to show mercy on the man they described as honest
and courageous.

His sister, Ada Kaplan, testified that her older brother often missed
family gatherings and holidays because of his commitment to police work.

"For 20 years, he gave his life for the city of Miami, day in and day out,"
she said. "Tell me that it's worth something."

In sentencing the men, Gold is bound by a complex set of guidelines that
attribute a certain number of points for the charges against the former
officers and the role of each in the cover-ups.

Prosecutors want the toughest sentence to go to Aguero, who spent nine of
his 17 years on the force relieved of duty for alleged wrongdoing of one
kind or another. Prosecutor Curtis Miner is seeking eight to 10 years for
Aguero; six to eight years for Beguiristain; and four to five years for
Castello and Ronda.

Defense attorneys have argued that the clients' sentences should be reduced
to six to 16 months because the men might be abused by fellow inmates while
imprisoned.

To make their point, they brought in former Miami police officer Pablo
Camacho, one of four former Miami police officers convicted of covering up
the beating death of drug dealer Leonardo Mercado in 1988.

Camacho, now a legal investigator for a Miami law firm, testified that he
had to spend nine weeks in solitary confinement for his own protection when
inmates found out he was a former police officer. He eventually was moved
to another federal prison where he served out the rest of his 120-week
sentence.

At one point, the former officer said, he realized he was serving time with
a drug dealer who was friends with Mercado.

"You tell me how you sleep at night," he said.

Prosecutors noted that of the 801 former law enforcement officers in
federal prison throughout the nation, only 27 were in solitary confinement
and that only three of those were in confinement for something other than a
disciplinary issue.