A Honduran drug dealer let out of jail in 2021 after an SFPD raid found a loaded gun, six pounds of fentanyl and $15,000 in cash, and who immediately carried on dealing drugs, was sentenced to 70 months’ imprisonment this afternoon as an exasperated federal judge threw the book at him.
Darwin Mancia-Murillo, 24, earlier pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute fentanyl.
“It’s an awful crime,” said U.S. District Judge William Orrick.
“It is so horrific…I don’t know how many people might have died as a result of what you did. I don’t know how many of the people who are suffering here, just around the courthouse, whose lives have been degraded by what you did. I have to believe it’s pretty substantial.”
Prosecutors say that he was the right-hand man of a drug trafficking kingpin and himself ran a network of lower-level dealers beneath him. He distributed drugs in San Francisco from his base in Oakland.
The illegal alien was told he faces deportation at the end of his sentence.
On October 13 2021 SFPD executed a search warrant at Mancia-Murillo’s Oakland home. In his bedroom they found a loaded 9mm semi-automatic pistol equipped with an extended magazine, $15,000 in cash and bags full of Mannitol – a bulking agent used to prepare illegal narcotics for sale.
Elsewhere at the residence police found more than six pounds of fentanyl and other drugs.
“Despite being released by state court for that conduct,” wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Bisesto in a sentencing memorandum, “the defendant continued to engage in drug trafficking activities.”
At this point officials from the Drug Enforcement Administration obtained a federal warrant to intercept the defendant’s phone calls. In May 2022 they heard him talking variously about distributing large quantities of fentanyl, collecting payments for drugs sales and resupplying himself with narcotics.
Arrested again at his home in Oakland, agents recovered a revolver, a taser, 30g of cocaine and keys to what authorities suspected was a ‘stash house’ elsewhere in the city. At that site they found a rifle, more than six kilograms of fentanyl and equipment connected with large scale narcotics distribution.
Brought before a federal magistrate judge on new charges in August 2022, he was ordered released again. It was thanks only to prosecutors’ appeal to no-nonsense U.S. District Judge James Donato, who found that Mancia-Murillo was both a danger to the public and a flight risk, that he was kept in custody.
“Mr Mancia-Murillo made a choice to distribute drugs, and more importantly, he made a choice to take advantage of our community,” Bisesto told the court as he pressed for a 72 month sentence.
“The astonishing quantity of the drugs found in his organization’s stash house suggests that the defendant successfully created a professional distribution business capable of supplying a countless number of fentanyl users.”
“The devastating impact fentanyl has had on the streets of downtown San Francisco, California is not lost on Mr Mancia-Murillo,” wrote defense attorney Charles Woodson. Describing his client as “an immigrant from Central America who made his way to the United States to seek out a better opportunity to earn money and support his family until he fell on hard times,” he invited the court to impose a 36 month custodial term.
“I apologize to the community of San Francisco, and to everyone who is present here, and to the victims of my mistakes,” Mancia-Murillo told the court today through a Spanish-language interpreter.
“I’m really very sorry for the harm that I have caused and, in the time I have spent in custody, I have really given a lot of thought to all the harm I have caused.
“After I’m done with my sentence I’d like to start my life over and become a better person.“
Mancia-Murillo’s co-defendants have already been sentenced.
Earlier this month Edin Ismael Rodriguez-Cartagena received an eight year sentence for his role in the conspiracy and Abraham Antonio Cruz-Arteaga was sentenced to seven and a half years’ imprisonment in March this year.
Both are illegal aliens from Honduras.
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