Appellate panel orders new trial in drug case

BOISE – A divided federal appeals court panel on Tuesday ordered a third trial for two accused drug smugglers whose earlier convictions were overturned in a case the government maintained had implications for the prosecution of terrorism.

On a 2-1 vote, the majority on the panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that there was insufficient evidence in either of their earlier trials to prove that Francisco Jimenez Recio and Adrian Lopez-Meza were involved in a 1997 drug conspiracy that police uncovered and turned into a sting operation.

They were arrested during a sting operation involving a flatbed truck loaded with about $12 million worth of cocaine and marijuana.

Officers had seized the truck and arrested the driver and a companion near Las Vegas in November 1997. With the companion’s help, lawmen set up the sting operation at a mall in Nampa. Recio and Lopez-Meza were arrested after showing up there to get the truck.

In their first trial in 1998, the trial court did not require compliance with a legal precedent that had for years guided conspiracy litigation in the West – that someone cannot be lured into a conspiracy by informants after police have thwarted the illegal activity.

In the second trial in 1999, the court required that precedent be followed only to have the U.S. Supreme Court declare it invalid three years later.

Recio, 36, and Lopez-Meza, 27, were convicted both times. Recio is serving 10 1/2 years in prison and Lopez-Meza 11 years.

The majority on the appeals panel Tuesday ruled that in the first trial there was insufficient evidence to prove that either man was involved in the drug scheme before police found it out, only that they got involved afterward. The judges said that was unacceptable under the now-discredited precedent.