Our criminal justice system is broke; it needs to be completely revamped. They have the power, and if you don’t play the game, they’ll throw the book at you.
~Terry Nelson (Former Federal Agent)
A few things on this. A jury convicted her. This was regarding cocaine that was being shipped from Mexico to the U.S. None of us really know what is and is not true. But – there is something very wrong with a law that allows for a first time offender (guilty or otherwise) to get more time than drug kingpins because they have more information to sell to the Feds.
The Houston Chronicle has the story HERE:
Convicted of being a manager in the conspiracy, she is serving a longer sentence than some of the hemisphere’s most notorious crime bosses – men who had multimillion-dollar prices on their heads before their capture.
The drug capos had something to trade: the secrets of criminal organizations. The biggest drug lords have pleaded guilty in exchange for more lenient sentences.
Castillo maintains her innocence, saying she was tricked into unknowingly helping transport drugs and money for a big trafficker in Mexico. But she refused to plead guilty and went to trial.
The ACLU adds:
Convicted in a drug-smuggling conspiracy, 56-year-old Castillo maintains that she didn’t know she was being used as a pawn in a cocaine trafficking operation between Mexico and Houston. Given her alleged role as a low-level player in the conspiracy, it makes sense that she was not privy to — and therefore could not provide — any valuable information to federal agents that could lead to the arrest and prosecution of the leaders or other high level members of the alleged conspiracy. Since she was of no help to the government, Castillo received the harshest sentence of the approximately 68 people involved in the scheme, despite being a first-time offender who never saw the drugs she was accused of trafficking.
