Honduran dealer's 'duress' defense could be blueprint for Tenderloin drug traffickers
The trial of a Honduran woman accused of peddling drugs in San Francisco’s Tenderloin began this morning at the city’s federal courthouse – with her attorneys running a ‘duress’ defense which, if successful, could offer a template for the city’s illegal alien fentanyl dealers to beat charges.
The court heard that Riccy Cruz-Alvarez, 29, was caught dealing drugs in the late evening of May 13 2024. The defendant, who was paroled into the U.S. at the Mexican border under the Biden administration, was bailed four days after her arrest and has been free since.
“Fentanyl, methamphetamine and cocaine. Not one, all three,” assistant U.S. attorney Sophia Cooper told the jury in her opening statement.
“This case is about drug dealing – the defendant, Ms Cruz-Alvarez, and another man, were working together to sell those three drugs here in San Francisco, a few blocks away from this courthouse.”
The court was shown video taken from a camera mounted on a covert DEA surveillance vehicle parked on Hyde Street. This showed Cruz-Alvarez, hooded and wearing a balaclava, dealing drugs.
“Pay particular attention to how she scoops the drugs and ties off the plastic bags in just a few seconds,” said Cooper. “The defendant knew what she was doing. She was in control and she was dealing drugs in the Tenderloin.”
Cruz-Alvarez was among those arrested by a 14-man DEA task force flown in by the DEA for 30 days to target Tenderloin drug dealers in Spring 2024. Body worn camera footage showed agents recovering plastic bags containing white substances from the defendant’s pockets after the arrest.
Defense attorney Ned Smock did not dispute that his client was the person in the video or that she was arrested with the drugs alleged. She should be acquitted, he said, because she was placed in an impossible position, after her drug dealing brother’s arrest left his gang contacts $20,000 out of pocket and they demanded she make up the amount.
“She faced repeated escalating threats that if she did not go onto the streets of the Tenderloin to work off her brother’s drug debt she or her family would be seriously hurt or killed,” Smock told the jury.
“They sent men to her apartment building. She could tell from their accents that they were from Honduras. These people don’t just make threats, they carry them out publicly and violently.”
“A choice driven by threats is not a free choice. A choice driven by abject fear is not a free choice. It’s the choice of a person acting in survival mode.”
“Acting under duress is a complete defense to the charges in this case.”
Smock invited the jury to believe Cruz-Alvarez had been selling drugs for only a few weeks before she was caught.
“She came to the USA to build a better life, so her daughters could go to school, so they could be safe, so they could prosper in this country. [She] did not come to this country to sell drugs,” Smock told the jury.
“She did not sneak across. This was a time under the Biden administration when there was a parole situation – when you could request to be paroled into the country and she put herself on a list and waited on the Mexican side of the border for a year,” he added.
Jurors were told that after arriving in the U.S. with her three children, Cruz-Alvarez lived in Texas, before moving to the Bay Area after having another child.
The man arrested with Cruz-Alvarez – Marvin Martel – pleaded guilty to possession with intent to distribute fentanyl and was given a time-served three week sentence on June 5 2024 and then handed over to immigration officials for deportation.
This case represents a rare instance of a federal drug case going to trial.
The trial, before U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria and a jury, is expected to last three days.
The case continues.
May 11 update: the jury deadlocked and has been discharged. It appeared ten members were inclined to accept a duress defense while two were unconvinced. The jury foreman sent repeated notes to the judge stating that jurors would not be able to reach a unanimous verdict. The parties will return to court on May 26 for further proceedings. Cruz-Alvarez remains out of custody.
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