“It’s pretty clear that the state system totally dropped the ball” – federal judge excoriates local colleagues as she sentences Honduran whose drugs killed beloved SF teacher.
An illegal alien drug dealer whose fentanyl, sold in the guise of cocaine, killed a San Francisco teacher was sentenced to 9 years’ imprisonment in federal court today – one year more than the term recommended by prosecutors.
Honduran national Hanti Gamez earlier pleaded guilty to possession with intent to distribute fentanyl and being a felon in possession of a firearm.
34-year-old teacher Gabriel Clark died at a SoMa apartment on July 2 2023 after Gamez delivered what was meant to be cocaine to a friend of the victim, who shared it with him.
After the drug was shared with him, Clark fell unconscious and died.
Gamez has been arrested 14 times in the Bay Area since 2015, principally for drugs offenses, with his penultimate arrest coming barely two weeks before Clark’s death.
At a sentencing hearing this afternoon at San Francisco federal courthouse U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney excoriated her colleagues at the city’s Hall of Justice who had failed to get to grips with Gamez’ offending.
“He was in the state court system being treated as if he was hardly doing anything wrong. They would put him on probation…and within days he would be back on the street committing another crime.”
U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney
“At some point it’s pretty clear that the state system totally dropped the ball,” said U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney.
“He was in the state court system being treated as if he was hardly doing anything wrong. They would put him on probation…and within days he would be back on the street committing another crime.”
“So, at this point, this is someone who thinks ‘boy, at this point, I can do just about anything, no one cares’.”
“This is a moment of reckoning,” the victim’s sister told the court this afternoon. “A reckoning with the justice system that has too often failed. A reckoning with the fentanyl crisis that is devastating San Francisco, and a reckoning with the judgments we make as a society.”
“It is not enough,” she said of prosecutors’ recommended eight-year sentence. “It does not reflect the gravity of my brother’s death. It does not send a strong enough message to those who profit from fentanyl.”
Defending the proposed eight year sentence – significantly below sentences for similar offending elsewhere – Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Barry argued that his office could not prove to a jury that Gamez dealt the drugs that killed Clark. He only admitted to doing so, he said, as part of a plea agreement in which the government agreed to recommend a maximum eight year term.
“It was clear from the get go that Mr Gamez was the source,” conceded Barry, ”but proving it beyond reasonable doubt would prove a real challenge.”
In response, Clark’s father told Judge Chesney that it would have been possible to prove at trial – his son’s two friends, who were also sickened as a result of taking the drug sold by Gamez, were prepared to testify even at the cost of incriminating themselves as narcotics users, he said.
He also pointed out that authorities were not initially interested in investigating the case and it was only though the “dogged determination” and campaigning of the family that action was taken.
The charges to which Gamez pleaded guilty related to his subsequent sales of drugs to an undercover police officer, after law enforcement tracked him down via his phone number, and the gun and drugs that were found when he was arrested.
“So what we have here,” noted Judge Chesney today, “is an indictment that charges two hand-to-hand sales on different dates, on each date to an undercover officer… and then…searching officers found a loaded gun plus more fentanyl…plus a whole buffet of other drugs.”
“I would like to apologize for the mistakes that I have made in the past,” Gamez told the court through a Spanish translator.
“I also apologize to the state of California and to the families affected in San Francisco,” he added.
“This has probably been the hardest case I’ve had in terms of trying to find an appropriate sentence,” said the judge, “because it doesn’t fit any model that we’ve had up to this point – an admission to something so serious and yet an agreement only made to recommend a sentence of no more than eight years.”
“I think the sentence should be at least somewhat higher,” than the range envisaged in the plea agreement, concluded the judge, imposing a nine year term.
Gamez was told he would be deported on release.
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