Overcoming an initial deadlock, a US federal jury in Houston on Wednesday convicted three South Texans in a botched scheme that killed 19 illegal immigrants sealed in a trailer bound north from the Mexican border in 2003.
Eleven people have now been convicted in the case, the nation's deadliest human-smuggling disaster. Fourteen were charged after the trailer, crammed with at least 74 people from Mexico and Central America, was found abandoned at a truck stop in Victoria, Texas, on May 14, 2003, with 17 bodies inside. Two more victims died later.
The trial featured gripping accounts from survivors, one of whom, Jose Juan Roldan-Castro, testified that the three-and-a-half hours in the trailer felt like "centuries." He described tearing holes in the trailer in a desperate bid for air.
The three defendants in the current trial, Victor Sanchez Rodriguez, 58, and his wife, Emma Sapata Rodriguez, 59, of Brownsville; and her half-sister, Rosa Maria Serrata, 51, of San Benito, were together found guilty of 35 of 43 counts involving the feeding, sheltering and transporting of the victims and survivors, and could each face up to 20 years in prison. Judge Vanessa Gilmore set sentencing for May 1.
The government charged that by harboring the immigrants, the trio shared responsibility with those who directed the smuggling operation and with the truck driver.
It appeared Tuesday that the three-week-long trial had come apart. Jurors reported themselves deadlocked. Gilmore read them a standard exhortation to keep deliberating, and their next note, Wednesday morning, announced their agreement on verdicts.
Because the jury found that none of the immigrants "died as a result of the conduct" of the defendants, the maximum penalty was 20 years instead of life in prison.
The Rodriguezes and Serrata, all American citizens, fled to Mexico after the incident, but were arrested there and returned for trial.
Their convictions came almost a year after the driver of the truck, Tyrone Williams, 35, of Schenectady, New York, was found guilty on smuggling charges.
But jurors deadlocked on questions of his culpability, and the government is seeking to retry him on all charges.
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