By Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Maxwell Book
BBC-Guardian UK - Honduras - ESPN NY Mag
SDNY COURT, April 23, 1st Person -- 26 Federal Plaza is a faceless government building staring blinding across Foley Square at the columned courthouse of 40 and 60 Centre Street.
Criminal defendants are taken there to be processed before they are presented in the Southern Distict Magistrates Court on the fifth floor. Usually.
Juan Orlando Hernandez, until earlier in the year the president of Honduras, was no usual defendant. After years of selling his country and position to drug traffickers like El Chapo Guzman in exchange for campaign money to steal a second term, the day before he had been flown here from Tegucigalpa on a small plane by the US Drug Enforcement Agency.
Now I just had to find out where he was, and when he would be presented.
It wasn't easy. First thing that Friday I went to the SDNY Magistrates Court but found the door locked. I'm used to locked doors. I got locked out of the United Nations after I asked why Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary General then and now on the day of extradition, had supported JOH's second term.
Guterres had sent south a four-person UN team to smooth things over, then refused to provide any read-out. The response was to have me roughed up by UN Security then banned. How very JOH. Birds of a feather.
Now I covered the SDNY courthouse. I sent a few emails, asking when and where JOH would be presented. By noon there was an answer. At 3 pm, but only by telephone, or video conference. We would be allowed to watch it on the TV screens jurors used, in a large courtroom on the 24th floor of the courthouse.
I went out to the street in front of the courthouse, where a crowd on Honduras had already started to gather. An old woman greeted me.
"Mateo, I haven't seen you since the sentencing of Geovanny Fuentes Ramirez," she said.
"I'm here every day," I said. "But welcome back."
"Do you think Tony could reduce his sentence by testifying about JOH?" she asked me.
Juan Antonio Hernandez or Tony was Juan Orlando's brother. He had been convicted in a jury trial presided over by Judge P. Kevin Castel who then sentenced him to life plus thirty years in prison.
"Maybe he could get a couple of years shaved off," I said. Life plus 28.
I walked through the playground, past a cluster of TV reporters one of whom I recognized from the UN - he had done nothing to defend or even ask the UN about me, after Guterres had me roughed up and banned - and bought for three dollars a container of Chinese hot and sour soup at Tasty Dumpling on Mulberry Street.
What people like JOH and his brother didn't know, I thought to myself sipping the soup, was that a person could live fine without getting in bed with head-choppers like El Chapo. But I digress.
At 2:55 pm I went up to the 24th floor. We reporters were allowed into the jury box, each with our own TV monitor which showed JOH sitting in a white room with a phone handset in his ear. He was still wearing the blue puff jacket in which he'd been extradited from Honduras.
Usually the first thing an arrested defendant gives up in his jacket, soon to be replaced with beige prison clothes. That JOH still had the jacket implied to me that he was being handled differently. So too this virtual presentment, which avoided him being paraded into the Magistrates Courtroom in shackles, two US Marshals looming over him.
JOH's lawyer Raymond Colon could be heard but not seen. Maybe he didn't turn his camera on, or maybe the Microsoft Teams platform Magistrate Judge Stewart D. Aaron was using didn't allow more people to be shown beyond himself, JOH and Assistant US Attorney Elinor Tarlow.
She had used the blurring function that Teams as well as Zoom and WebEx offer. But still visible was the clock on the wall behind her, though not the time. She was in her office.
Judge Aaron was in his Chambers, with a bookshelf and American flag behind him. But where was the room the JOH was in, with window near he he kept looking out of?
The proceeding began.
"Mister Orlando Hernandez, are you understanding me through the interpreter?" Judge Aaron asked.
Orlando Hernandez had been a Cuban pitcher for the New York Yankees, who had swum part of the 90 miles to Florida and signed a big free agent contract. It was what Judge Aaron was calling JOH, instead of Mister Hernandez Alvarado. Happens all the time.
I recognized the voice of the interpreter, the main Spanish language interpreter used in the SDNY. I often wondered how he felt at the end of the day after translating allocutions and pleas for mercy, like "Your Honor I will never do it again," or "Your Honor I never meant to hurt this great country" by a defendant before prison followed by deportation. The interpreter should be the author, not me. But maybe his contract prohibited it. A cultural Non-Disclosure Agreement.
"Mister Orlando Hernandez, you are charged with certain crimes," Judge Aaron said. "You have the right to remain silent. We may have to notify your country that you have been arrested."
This was ironic, given that JOH has been extradited under his successor. Everyone in Honduras knew he had been arrested, and many were playing drugs and holding banners supporting his arrest on Worth Street 24 stories below.
"A grand jury returned an indictment against you for cocaine importation, possession of machine guns, conspiracy," Judge Aaron said. "Since 2004 to 2022 you allegedly participated in a drug trafficking organization and received millions to support DTOs in Honduras, Mexico and elsewhere."
I had been in Judge Castel's courtroom when a witness described El Chapo delivering a million dollars to JOH using a fake TV news truck. But where else had JOH invected with drug money? The UN's glass house on 42nd Street? Or only UNSG Antonio Guterres' mansion ten blocks north on Sutton Place?
Judge Aaron said, "Let me hear the government's position on detention or bail."
"The Government is seeking detention, on grounds of risk of flight and danger to the community," Assistant US Attorney Tarlaw said.
I perked up. Maybe there would be a bail fight, and the AUSA would have to preview their evidence against JOH, beyond what had been said during the trials of Tony Hernandez and then Geovanny Fuentes Ramirez.
But JOH's lawyer Raymond Colon said off-camera, "We consent but may file a request for release on bail later, once we get the sureties in place."
JOH would certainly have the money, drug money, to present a bail package.
"So it will be detention on consent without prejudice," Judge Aaron said. "When is the next proceeding?"
"There is an arraignment on May 10 at 11 am before Judge Castel," AUSA Tarlow said. "We move to exclude Speedy Trial Act time."
"No objection," Colon said.
"Then we'll stand adjourned," Judge Aaron said. For a moment it seemed they might leave the video camera on and we'd learn more where JOH was. But the screen faded to black. And I could hear the protesters' drums from down on Worth Street. I would write this proceeding up then got out and live stream them. It was Narco Honduras Day 1 - a series I would follow to the end.
Spanish, and bonus on DEA, on Patreon here.
***
Your support means a lot. As little as $5 a month helps keep us going and grants you access to exclusive bonus material on our Patreon page. Click here to become a patron.
