By MATTHEW BARAKAT
The Associated Press
ALEXANDRIA, Va. - The trial has started for four members of a notorious street gang accused of killing a pregnant teenager who joined the gang _ and later became a federal informant.
The lawyer for one of the four essentially admitted his client’s guilt, telling jurors that trying to understand the backward code of honor among members of MS-13 _ which has its roots in El Salvador and is also known as Mara Salvatrucha _ is fruitless.
“What you’re going to hear is a story of absolute tragedy: lost children, lost souls, how lives can be so tragically mishandled,” said James Clark, attorney for Ismael Juarez Cisneros, who admitted his role and implicated his co-defendants. “Please don’t expect to make any sense of it.”
The lawyer for the man who allegedly masterminded the slaying of Brenda Paz argued at least a dozen other gang members wanted her dead.
“A lot of people had a problem with Ms. Paz,” said Jerome Aquino, lawyer for Denis Rivera. “Ms. Paz played a dangerous game.”
The two other defendants are Oscar Antonio Grande and Oscar Alexander Garcia-Orellana.
According to prosecutors, Paz joined the gang when she was 14, and it became her surrogate family; her pleasant demeanor earned her the nickname “Smiley.”
She also was Rivera’s former girlfriend, but at some point became disenchanted with her life and agreed to testify against Rivera and reveal what she knew about the gang, said prosecutor Ronald Walutes.
She entered the federal Witness Protection Program, but did poorly and was moved around, eventually leaving the program and rejoining her old gang, Walutes said.
“Brenda Paz was pregnant, lonely and she missed her family _ MS-13,” Walutes said. The prosecutor said Rivera became increasingly suspicious of her and eventually enlisted trusted gang members to kill her.
Walutes acknowledged there is no physical evidence or eyewitnesses connecting the defendants to the murder scene. But he said other gang members will testify, and prosecutors will play tapes of coded phone conversations between Rivera and others in which they say he planned the murder.
Aquino said Rivera and the other defendants make an easy scapegoat for Paz’s murder and said authorities brought the charges as a way to escape blame for their own failure to protect Paz once she entered witness protection.
The trial, being held in U.S. District Court, could last up to two months if the defendants are convicted, which would trigger a penalty phase to determine if the death penalty is warranted.
Death penalty experts said it is very rare for a single jury to hear four capital cases simultaneously.