INSIDE THE SDNY: "For Brokering Fentanyl Marmolejos Gets 36 Months Through Safety Valve in SDNY" - But There's More, Here
You could learn a lot about the justice system, in the CourtCall interstices...
By Matthew Russell Lee
BBC - Guardian UK - Honduras - ESPN
SDNY COURTHOUSE, Nov 24 – Agustin Marmolejos pleaded guilty to being a broker of both heroin and fentanyl, and got an agreed guideline of 70 to 87 months, with Assistant US Attorney Benjamin Woodside Schrier agreeing he was eligible for the so-called safety valve.
On November 24 U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Judge Paul A. Engelmayer held his sentencing. Inner City Press covered it, on CourtCall.
On the publicly-announced open line, before the proceeding belatedly began, a former SDNY AUSA put questions to a current one. Schrier explained that he clerked for Judges Cabranes and Karas, who lit a fire under him to become an SDNY prosecutor.
Judge Engelmayer asked him how many trials Judge Karas had did his year clerking.
Four, was the answer. And that was not limited to criminal cases, for which Judge Engelmayer said there were structural reasons for there being less and less.
Schrier asked Judge Engelmayer if he's overlapped with Judge Karas in the SDNY US Attorney's office. 1989? 1992? Judge Engelmayer mentioned a brief he worked on while in the appeals unit.
Quarantine accommodations and first class flights were discussed, before the sentencing of a man from a village without plumbing to be deported after three years in jail.
Marmolejos' lawyer noted that where his client grew up in the Dominican Republic, there still is no indoor plumbing.
He said Marmolejos had worked in Dave & Busters and at a sushi restaurant in Patterson, New Jersey - and that he would be deported.
Judge Engelmayer went with the recommendation of Probation, 36 months, noting that this was Marmolejos' first offense and imposing a search condition on Supervised release - even though the defendant is to be deported. It's two parallel worlds, which Inner City Press will document here.
The case is USA v. Marmolejos, 19-cr-626 (Engelmayer)