When California Lawyer Magazine contacted Pulitzer-winning author/journalist, Edward Humes, to write something about the case of Alex Sanchez (published in their February issue), Humes said he first took the story assignment because he was intrigued by the notion that someone as beloved as gang intervention leader Sanchez was said to be living an elaborate double life.
“That becomes the HBO movie, right?” he said.
But as Humes delved into the details of the case and began going to Sanchez’ hearings in federal court, presided over by Judge Manual Real (a character so extravagantly quirky that he begs to be incorporated into a novel), Humes says he began to wonder if perhaps the real story wasn’t something quite different than the tale he first imagined.
As most WitnessLA readers know, Alex Sanchez is a former MS-13 gang member turned highly respected gang violence reduction activist who has been accused of a long list of Federal racketeering and conspiracy charges. According to the government’s case, the supposedly reformed Sanchez never reformed at all, but remained, in reality, a MS-13 shot caller who ordered at least one murder.
Since most LA media outlets have all but ignored the story, I wanted to know more about how and why Humes became interested. Hence our conversation.
Humes told me that one of the things that first caught his attention when he began to get into the case was the fact that bulk of the evidence that the federal lawyers presented against Sanchez focused on four wire-tapped conversations in which Sanchez took part. “But you have these dueling interpretations of the main quotes.” Humes said. As he writes in his article, the government’s interpretation is provided by an LAPD gang expert named Frank Flores. The defense had the conversations independently translated by gang intervention and recovery expert Father Greg Boyle.
I asked Humes what he thought of the discrepant interpretations. “Frankly, Father Boyle’s version of the conversations make a lot more sense in context,” he said
After looking at the dueling translations, Humes said he began to wonder why the government’s interpretation of conversations and events seemed all to require an assumption of guilt.
“The Supreme Court is very clear that the prosecution’s job is-–not to win—but to see that justice is done. So one of the questions I still want answered is why are they so convinced that he [Sanchez] is dirty since they haven’t produced convincing evidence so far? There may be a lot more at the trial, but based on what they’ve produced so far….”
As to whether he has a gut feeling about Alex Sanchez guilt or innocence himself, Humes won’t commit. “Let’s just say that basically I have a lot of questions about the government’s case. And they need to be answered.”
Humes’ willingness to ask questions has produced an even-handed, thought-provoking and informative look at the case thus far.
Below you’ll find a clip from the story’s opening. But be sure to read the whole article from beginning to end. it’s more than worth your time.
[FIRST, ONE SMALL NOTE: The Sanchez trial was supposed to have begun yesterday, on Valentine’s Day. It has now been delayed until September 2011, at the earliest. With the ever-receding trial date in mind, it is worth remembering that, had Sanchez’ attorney and supporters not managed to get the presiding judge to reverse himself and grant Sanchez a $2 million bail (and even that only after four bail hearings and the intervention of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals), the defendant—whether guilty or innocent—would have remained in jail from June 2009 until….whenever.]
The four phone calls that put Alex Sanchez in jail—and in the middle of a massive federal racketeering and conspiracy case—were angry, profane, and seemingly illuminating. They opened a rare window not only onto the brutal, secretive, backstabbing world of one of America’s most notorious street gangs, but also on the life of Sanchez himself, a nationally prominent anti-gang activist in Los Angeles credited with steering hundreds of young people away from lives of crime and violence.
What Sanchez didn’t know in 2006 when he participated in those calls was that the FBI was listening in. Nor could he have guessed that the words he spoke would help convince a federal-local investigative task force that Sanchez was leading a double life, publicly opposing gangs in his day job, then moonlighting after hours as a leader or “shot-caller” of the Los Angeles street-gang-turned-international-crime-syndicate known as Mara Salvatrucha—MS-13.
The feds characterized one conversation in particular as a smoking gun. It was a conference call with several known members of MS-13, who continually referred to Sanchez as Rebelde, Spanish for rebel, his old nickname from the gang life he’d supposedly left behind 15 years before. The men on the tape debated what to do about an El Salvador – based gangster known as Camarón (the Shrimp), whom Sanchez accused of falsely branding him a police informant—a veritable death sentence in these circles. Sanchez wanted to turn the tables: “He has to face the consequences,” he urged. “We have said it, we go to war.”
Little more than a week after that exchange, the lifeless corpse of Camarón, whose real name was Walter Lacinos, was found shot through the head in La Libertad, El Salvador, a hotbed of MS-13 activity.
Had the FBI just heard Sanchez’s alter ego, Rebelde, order a hit on Camarón? That was the story the U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles offered at a press conference in June 2009 to announce a historic racketeering indictment against Sanchez and 23 named MS-13 members.
“Today in Los Angeles, where the MS-13 gang was formed, we are holding its leaders accountable for the violence and intimidation they have used to bring terror to the citizens living and working within the gang’s territory,” then-U.S. Attorney Thomas P. O’Brien told reporters. The indictments marked the latest assault in a nine-year war on MS-13 by the FBI, which had used 21 court-ordered wiretaps to monitor thousands of phone conversations.
The wiretaps had already helped build an earlier state case against the alleged top shot-caller for MS-13 in Los Angeles. (It also appears that the FBI had made informants out of the alleged “CEO” of MS-13’s worldwide operations, as well as his second-in-command.) Now the recordings were being used in an effort to bring down Sanchez, a poster boy for the gang-prevention efforts that many law enforcement officials reflexively distrusted.
The latest indictments charged that the defendants had conspired to engage in extortion, drug dealing, robbery, witness intimidation, and seven murders. The complaint also described a failed conspiracy to assassinate one of the government’s top gang experts, Detective Frank Flores of the Los Angeles Police Department.
This was a major breakthrough in the fight against MS-13, proclaimed then-LAPD Chief William Bratton, speaking at O’Brien’s press conference. He branded the gang “a cancer … that lacks a single redeeming quality.” And yet no aspect of the story drew as much attention as the charges against Sanchez.
Read on.
The video is from March 2009 at UCLA where Alex Sanchez was on a panel examining “Global Perspectives of Youth and Violence.” Three months later, Sanchez would be arrested by the FBI for racketeering and conspiracy, charges that could get him sentenced to life in prison.
Sanchez is an expert in continuing a criminal enterprise, intimidating and harassing anyone he thinks is in his way. People say he has a police license to kill. Criticizing him will be impossible for most of those intimidated. People are just too scared. He doesn’t care about the past, has never really been sanctioned, and struts around like he is preparing to run for political office. Many people are hoping that the Feds can take him out. He shows very, very little fear and absolutely no remorse. My guess is that he has access to very large cash resources and plans to embed himself within an LAPD “community” setting for reasons that have to do with long term goals. I feel some fear at even posting this remark.
James, You know all this how, exactly?
I challenge you to cite one single shred of proof for any of your statements. One.
Otherwise all we have in your comment is a gigantic smelly pile of vile and slanderous crap.
“Many people are hoping that the Feds can take him out.”
Shame on you.
When I read what you wrote I see in my minds eye the faces of Alex’s children and I feel physically ill.
Community meetings are not personal opportunities for Mr.Sanchez to garner support for his ambitions and agendas. I am not intimidated. Mr. Sanchez, your days of free riding and having no one challenge you are over. I see in my mind’s eye the faces of people who are sick of being bullied. Mr.Sanchez ought to guard his own steps, instead of dogging everyone else’s. I challenge you to provide proof of slander. I do not plan on being initiated, thank you. And I will not reply to too many queries that are intended to intimidate. Don’t hide behind your children. It is unbecoming. Don’t visit me. Don’t threaten me.
I wonder, will I have to face the consequences of criticizing Alex Sanchez? “He has to face the coinsequences,” isn’t what Sanchez said on a call he didn’t know was being recorded? I think Alex Sanchez would have a dead cat left near someone’s home if he thought it would scare the person. I think he finally will do something so vicious and flagrant that even a Church that forgives and protects pedophiles within the ranks of their clergy, even the police and politicians, will have to stop lionizig him and holding him out as a role model for young people. I wonder, are we going to be treated to community meetings where Mr. Sanchez will show up with Officer Frank Hernandez at his side and explain to us that it is okay for the police to gun down innocent people, just as long as they protect and nurture Mr.Sanchez? I feel sorry for Mr.Sanchez victims–and he has had many, or he wouldn’t be an antigang expert, would he? As for telling someone the names of anyone who criticized Mr.Sanchez–that would put their lives in danger. By the way, there was a dead cat left across the street from my building last week, after I criticized Mr.Sanches at a community meeting. It might be that Mr.Sanchez likes to spread his benevolent influence far and wide. He’s already gotten away with murder. Why stop, when the institutions of society that ought to have protected his victims are twisted to serve Sanchez because he was a valuable informant? The trouble with informants is that they don’t automatically change into saints or even into lawabiding citizens, after their testimony buys them a pass away from prosecution and punishment. They keep right on manipulating, until they are unsuccessful. It’s a shame that this kind of life is advertised as a moral triumph. Young people are impressionable. Some might try to follow Mr.Sanchez example.
“The defense had the conversations independently translated by gang intervention and recovery expert Father Greg Boyle.”
Don’t Sanchez and Boyle work together in their anti-gang effort? Perhaps we could get an unbiased translation from Sanchez’s mother to bolster his case?