{"id":432042,"date":"2017-09-24T14:09:25","date_gmt":"2017-09-24T20:09:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=432042"},"modified":"2017-09-24T14:09:25","modified_gmt":"2017-09-24T20:09:25","slug":"woman-arrested-in-atf-sting-pleads-guilty-for-reduced-sentence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2017\/09\/woman-arrested-in-atf-sting-pleads-guilty-for-reduced-sentence\/","title":{"rendered":"Woman arrested in ATF sting pleads guilty for reduced sentence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Jennifer Padilla has pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute meth in return for a two-year federal prison sentence.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_413228\"  class=\"wp-caption module image alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 336px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-413228\" src=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/1-Padilla-Profile-FB-336x364-336x364.jpg\" alt=\"Jennifer Padilla\" width=\"336\" height=\"364\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Courtesy photo<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jennifer Padilla, shown in spring 2016.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>If a federal judge accepts the plea deal, the 39-year-old\u00a0mother of five\u00a0could be free in less than a year because of the 13 months she\u2019s already spent in the Santa Fe County jail.<\/p>\n<p>Friday\u2019s proposed sentence represents a significant reduction from the 10 or more years Padilla was facing behind bars.<\/p>\n<p>The plea agreement, negotiated between Padilla\u2019s Santa Fe-based lawyer, L. Val Whitley, and federal prosecutors, came less than two months after Padilla alleged misconduct by a confidential informant in a 2016 operation conducted by the federal bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.<\/p>\n<p>New Mexico In Depth and the Santa Fe Reporter detailed Padilla\u2019s allegations last month in <a href=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2017\/08\/boyfriends-betrayal-abq-woman-jailed-after-atf-informant-lured-her-into-drug-deals\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a story<\/a> that included her claims of entrapment and \u201coutrageous government conduct\u201d \u2014 two legal arguments Whitley made in a pair of court motions in late July. The informant convinced her that he was her boyfriend, even having sex with her at the government-funded halfway house where she was living after heroin addiction led to a string of burglaries and 15 months in state prison, Padilla said. He spent time with her children, too, all the while keeping his government work a secret.<\/p>\n<p>Padilla is not backing off her allegations, Whitley said, although as a condition of the plea agreement she has withdrawn the court motions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe truly feels that she was entrapped, and we stand by the facts in our motions,\u201d Whitley said. \u201cBut she made a personal decision to take out some of the uncertainty of going to trial.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In Friday\u2019s appearance before federal magistrate Judge Laura Fashing, Padilla appeared to evince some of the mixed feelings Whitley described.<\/p>\n<p>Wearing a florescent green prison jumpsuit and five-point shackles in court, Padilla answered Fashing\u2019s questions for nearly 30 minutes.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"module align-left half type-aside\">\n<h3>About this article<\/h3>\n<p>This article comes from\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nmindepth.com\/2017\/09\/22\/woman-arrested-in-atf-sting-pleads-guilty-for-reduced-sentence\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">New Mexico In Depth<\/a>. Sign up for\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nmindepth.us6.list-manage.com\/subscribe?u=1d2ab093d81b992e50978b363&amp;id=9294743d38\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">their newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>To a handful Padilla answered \u201cNo, ma\u2019am\u201d \u2014 had she been forced to take the plea; was she under the influence of drugs or alcohol; and similar questions.<\/p>\n<p>Most of the time, however, Padilla replied \u201cYes, ma\u2019am\u201d in rapid-fire succession to 47 questions.<\/p>\n<p>Only when Fashing asked if Padilla \u201cknowingly and willingly participated\u201d in the conspiracy to sell meth did Padilla pause.<\/p>\n<p>She rocked back and forth, stiffened up, and then answered: \u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Asked whether prosecutors had offered Padilla a plea deal prior to the court motions and news story, Whitley said in an interview after the hearing: \u201cThere had been some discussions, but nothing concrete, and certainly nothing as favorable to my client as what we have now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Whitley believes the court motions and the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nmindepth.com\/2017\/08\/23\/boyfriends-betrayal-abq-woman-jailed-after-atf-informant-lured-her-into-drug-deals\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">story published last month<\/a>\u00a0led to the offer of substantially less prison time, he said.<\/p>\n<p>A nationally recognized legal expert who reviewed aspects of the case agreed.<\/p>\n<p>Concerns that are made public about confidential informants and their behavior can have a \u201cgravitational pull\u201d on the outcomes of cases, including plea negotiations, said Alexandra Natapoff, a former federal public defender.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Natapoff, a professor at the University of California at Irvine law school, is a nationally recognized expert on confidential informants.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf things go bad, or the informant can\u2019t be called as a witness for whatever reason, or the government learns something new about their snitch, cases often fall apart,\u201d Natapoff said. \u201cThere\u2019s no good data on how many cases rely on informants, so we don\u2019t know how often that happens, but we do know that it happens.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That said, Natapoff added, 95 percent of cases in the federal system are resolved through pleas rather than trials. And there are numerous factors that can impact plea deals.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe may never know why that deal was offered in this case,\u201d she said. \u201cBut this is an example where external forces related to the informant \u2014 media attention, defense motions \u2014 appear to have changed the negotiations for prosecutors.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office did not respond to questions or requests for comment following Friday\u2019s hearing.<\/p>\n<p>But Elizabeth Martinez, a spokeswoman for the office, issued a news release touting Padilla as the 77th person in the sting to plead guilty. The operation netted 103 arrests and federal officials praised it as a success in taking the \u201cworst of the worst\u201d off Albuquerque\u2019s crime-ridden streets.<\/p>\n<p>A multipart\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nmindepth.com\/2017\/05\/07\/feds-sting-ensnared-many-abq-blacks-not-worst-of-the-worst\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NMID investigation<\/a>\u00a0has called some of the government\u2019s claims about the operation \u00a0\u2014\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nmindepth.com\/2017\/05\/15\/atf-used-traveling-well-paid-informants-in-abq-sting\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">and its tactics<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 into question.<\/p>\n<p>Like many swept up in the sting, Padilla did not have the sort of lengthy, violent criminal history officials have said they used as a prerequisite for targeting people. Nor was she moving large quantities of guns and drugs in the city.<\/p>\n<p>A review of hundreds of federal court documents also showed the ATF arrested a highly disproportionate number of black people in the sting. Hispanics also were overrepresented among those arrested, while whites were heavily underrepresented.<\/p>\n<p>Those findings have drawn scrutiny\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nmindepth.com\/2017\/06\/15\/black-man-swept-up-in-atf-sting-wins-legal-victory-but-stiffer-prosecution-looms\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">from a federal judge<\/a>, as well as outrage and calls for reform in policing methods from\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nmindepth.com\/2017\/06\/12\/black-community-wants-answers-on-atfs-albuquerque-sting-say-it-was-punch-in-the-face\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Albuquerque\u2019s black community<\/a>\u00a0and a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nmindepth.com\/2017\/08\/25\/abq-city-councilor-wants-congressional-investigation-into-atf-sting\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">resolution from a city councilor<\/a>\u00a0demanding a rebuke of the ATF and a congressional investigation.<\/p>\n<p>Padilla contended in the court motions, and in interviews, that only after she and the informant were in what she believed to be a relationship did he pressure her to call old acquaintances and set up drug deals.<\/p>\n<p>NMID and SFR independently verified some, but not all of Padilla\u2019s claims.<\/p>\n<p>Padilla\u2019s prison term, had she been convicted at trial, would have been between 11 and 17 years depending on how federal sentencing guidelines were calculated, Whitley said. In part, her sentence would have been based on her past criminal record \u2014 which includes a felony drug possession conviction \u2014 and the amount of meth involved in the two sales.<\/p>\n<p>In negotiating the plea agreement, prosecutors abandoned most of those requirements and agreed to consider Padilla\u2019s limited role in the drug transactions: She never touched the meth and was not present when her acquaintances made sales to undercover ATF agents.<\/p>\n<p>She was arrested Aug. 10, 2016 and has been incarcerated at the Santa Fe county jail since.<\/p>\n<p>U.S. District Judge William P. \u201cChip\u201d Johnson must accept the deal and the prescribed 24-month sentence or reject it entirely. A hearing is expected in the next two months.<\/p>\n<p>If Johnson rejects the agreement, Whitley said Padilla likely would withdraw her guilty plea and he would refile the motion to dismiss her case.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe had people who initially corroborated Jennifer\u2019s account who, for various reasons, were not able to come forward to testify,\u201d Whitley said. \u201cThat would\u2019ve strengthened our position, for sure. Still, the government would have to respond to our claims and put their informant on the stand. We assume he would have denied everything, but she stands by her story and it is very compelling.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The plea agreement came less than two months after Jennifer Padilla alleged misconduct by a confidential informant in a 2016 operation conducted by federal agents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":413228,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[139,142,203],"class_list":["post-432042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-albuquerque","tag-crime","tag-law-enforcement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/413228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}