Great Falls Connection, The (VA)



Great Falls Connection, The (VA)

May 11, 2005

MS-13 Trial Heads to Jury

Jury begins deliberations in murder of teenage federal witness.

Author: Ken Moore

Blame for the murder of federal witness Brenda Paz, 17, extends well beyond the Alexandria courtroom and the four Northern Virginia gang members charged with killing her, said defense attorney Nina Ginsberg in closing arguments.

Missing from the defendant's table are Arlington police detectives, Paz's court-appointed guardian from Arlington County Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court, the FBI and the U.S. government, according to Ginsberg's closing argument on Monday, May 9 in U.S. District Court.

"Brenda Paz started to die the day her lawyer was appointed," Ginsberg said. "One day after he was appointed to represent her, he contacted Arlington police and said, 'I have a client who is willing to cooperate.' He didn't have one iota of sense or care at that point of what was best for Brenda Paz."

Considered a snitch by MS-13 gang members for cooperating with police and prosecutors, Paz was slated to testify as a federal witness in multiple trials against gang members in Northern Virginia and Texas. Paz, known as Smiley, was four-months pregnant when she was stabbed 16 times through her abdomen, throat and heart, nearly decapitated and left on a muddy river bank in Shenandoah County on .

The "green light" to murder Paz came from Texas and was supported by gang members from Los Angeles to El Salvador, but the decision to kill her was made at the Fair Oaks Holiday Inn on Rte. 50 on .

Ginsberg's client, Ismael Juarez Cisneros, 26 of Vienna, talked to Arlington and Alexandria police detectives, Rick Rodriguez and Victor Ignacio, 11 months after Paz was murdered.

"Sometimes I feel like I'm going crazy because all of this is coming back through my head," Cisneros told Ignacio in June 2004.

"Mr. Cisneros is the only person through the entire trial who has accepted responsibility for his or her part in Brenda Paz's death," Ginsberg said during her closing on the 17th day of the trial which began April 11.

Defendants Oscar Antonio Grande, 22 of Fairfax, Oscar Alexander Garcia-Orellana, 32 of Fairfax, and Paz's former boyfriend Denis Rivera, 21 of Alexandria, are charged along with Cisneros in Paz's death. Each faces the death penalty or life in prison for different counts, including conspiracy to retaliate against a witness or informant, killing a person aiding a federal investigation, and tampering with and retaliating against a witness. Rivera was in jail at the time of Paz's murder, and prosecutors say he ordered her death from prison. All four pleaded not guilty.

Closing arguments from the prosecution and each of four defense teams were underway Monday and Tuesday, May 9 and 10, and the jury began deliberations Tuesday at the Connection's presstime.

THE NIGHT BEFORE Paz was murdered, male members of MS-13 discussed her fate in the Holiday Inn hotel room as Paz and other female members talked and laughed in the hotel parking lot. That night, Paz, a former ward of the Arlington courts, slept in the hotel room along with about 20 members of MS-13, including Cisneros, Grande and Garcia-Orellana. The four left the next morning on what she thought was going to be a fishing trip.

"She had no idea that would be her last day. When she was walking along the bank of the Shenandoah River, she had no idea those would be her last steps," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Patricia T. Giles, who began closing statements Monday morning.

Paz, who had been in a witness protection program, voluntarily left the program on .

"She was a runaway, she was 17, she was pregnant, she was a member of MS-13. To those four defendants, she was nothing more than a rat, a snitch," Giles said.

THE CONSPIRACY STARTED long before the night at the Holiday Inn, according to Giles.

Paz was to testify against Rivera in another murder. Rivera was charged with killing a rival gang member Joaquin Diaz, 20. Diaz was murdered in September 2001 on Daingerfield Island, United States parkland along the Potomac River north of Old Town, Alexandria.

Paz's court-appointed guardian, Gregory Hunter, testified that Paz was prepared to testify how Rivera equated killing Diaz to cutting a chicken, and that Rivera said he would have decapitated Diaz if he had the right knife.

"That would have been powerful testimony and that gave Denis Rivera a motive," Giles said.

Paz also had information to be used against another MS-13 member in Texas, who was charged in a different murder case and wanted her silenced.

The Texas gang member wrote to the leader of the Centrales clique of MS-13 in Northern Virginia, a letter that is part of the evidence against Rivera. "You will see he deferred the problem of Brenda Paz to Denis Rivera," Giles said.

THE MOST COMPELLING and damning evidence against Rivera, she said, is in transcripts of Rivera's phone calls from May through August 2003 to other members of MS-13.

"Please read them all," Giles told the jury. "Those calls show Denis Rivera was suspicious of Brenda Paz, and how he became convinced she snitched on him."

But the transcripts of those calls are out of context, said Jerome P. Aquino, Rivera's defense attorney, who said that Rivera warned detectives that Paz was in danger.

Rivera met with Rick Rodriguez and other Arlington detectives four times in March and once in April of 2003, months before Paz's death, according to Aquino. "They wanted him to solicit information about the gang and gave him specific instructions how to behave," Aquino said during his closing argument.

Rivera cooperated with police and informed them that many members of MS-13 wanted Paz dead.

"We admit Denis Rivera knew about the plan to kill Brenda Paz, for sure, and he indicated that plan to law enforcement [before hand]," Aquino said.

Rivera called Rodriguez, the Arlington detective, on , the day Paz left Minneapolis, where she was housed under the witness protection program, according to Aquino. He left a message for Rodriguez, alerting him that MS-13 members were bringing Paz back from Minneapolis that night.

"He gave them enough information to do something about it," Aquino said. "If they followed up on the information Denis provided, Ms. Paz would be alive today."

"They are neck deep in this," he said. Convicting Rivera would unfairly absolve police, the FBI and the witness protection program of the sins they committed for their failure to protect Paz, Aquino said.

THE ONLY DEFENDANT to take the stand during the trial was Garcia-Orellana.

"I'm not guilty. I have not killed Ms. Paz. I did not touch her," he said Wednesday, May 4, during the trial. "I never helped anybody to kill anyone. Nor could I ever help anybody to do something like that."

Garcia-Orellana testified that he arrived at the hotel after MS-13 members from the Centrales clique had their meeting where they discussed Paz's fate. Garcia-Orellana spent the night at the Holiday Inn, partying with his friends from MS-13. The next morning, he was awakened by Cisneros who asked if he wanted to go on a fishing trip.

Garcia-Orellana said he was standing on the river bank throwing stones into the water when he heard a scream. He looked up, he said, and saw Grande and Cisneros stabbing Paz.

But prosecutor Giles said Garcia-Orellana wouldn't have been there if he wasn't part of the plan. "They took him because they trusted him. Oscar Garcia knew exactly what was going to happen," Giles said. "He wasn't there to go on a ride, he wasn't there to go fishing. They were there to do a job and that job was to kill Brenda Paz."

Garcia-Orellana's attorneys, Frank Salvato and Alex Levay, presented closing arguments Tuesday, May 11, at The Connection's presstime.

Closing statements from Assistant U.S. Attorney Ronald L. Walutes Jr. ended the trial Tuesday, and the jury began deliberations.

"Brenda Paz's murder was cold, deliberate and it was vicious," Giles said.

"They can not beat this system. Find them guilty."

Copyright 2005, Connection Newspapers, All Rights Reserved.

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