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From [HERE] Writing in the Drug War Chronicle, Clarence Walker describes a cocaine smuggling case handled by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Arizona that was thrown out because of a prosecutor's flagrant dishonesty—misconduct that prompted an extraordinary rebuke from a federal appeals court. The defendant, Aurora Lopez-Avila, was arrested in December 2009 while trying to cross the border from Mexico in a 2000 Dodge Stratus carrying 10 kilograms of cocaine. Facing the possibility of life in prison, Lopez-Avila initially pleaded guilty in the hope of benefiting from an "acceptance of responsibility" sentence reduction. Later she withdrew her guilty plea and went to trial, arguing that she had driven the car under duress: She claimed a drug trafficker threatened to harm her family if she did not do as he said. Trying to undermine Lopez-Avila's defense, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jerry Albert read from a transcript of the hearing at which she had entered her guilty plea:
Magistrate Judge Jennifer Zipps: Has anyone threatened you?
Lopez-Avila: No.
Albert presented the exchange as evidence that Lopez-Avila had changed her story, at first denying that she was coerced into smuggling drugs, then claiming that she was. But as her defense attorney, Mark Williman pointed out, the prosecutor had omitted some crucial words. The actual exchange was:
Zipps: Has anyone threatened you or forced you to plead guilty?
Lopez-Avila: No.
Confronted by this evidence that Albert had misrepresented the official record, U.S. District Judge Cindy Jorgenson declared a mistrial. But she rejected Williman's argument that to avoid double jeopardy the case against Lopez-Avila should be dismissed with prejudice, which would bar a second prosecution.