United States v. Raul Lopez-Alvarez

Raul Lopez-Alvarez, a former Mexican state police officer, and two co-defendants 1 were convicted after a two-month jury trial of charges stemming from the kidnappings and murders of DEA Special Agent Enrique Camarena-Salazar and DEA informant Alfredo Zavala. The principal evidence against Lopez-Alvarez consisted of videotaped admissions he made to Abel Reynoso, an undercover DEA agent, and Jose Reyes Garcia-Alvarez, a DEA informant. The defense argued that these statements were lies that Lopez-Alvarez had made up in order to convince the agents, who were posing as criminals, that he had ties to the drug underworld. His appeal raises the question, among many others, of the degree to which the government may rely on a defendant’s admissions in seeking to prove its case. We affirm four of Lopez-Alvarez’s six convictions.

Facts

On February 7, 1985, DEA Special Agent Camarena and Zavala, a pilot and DEA informant, disappeared from Guadalajara, Mexico. One month later, their bodies were found near Zamora, Michoacan, Mexico. They had been tortured and murdered. In connection with the murders, Mexican authorities arrested and imprisoned several Mexican police officers, including the…

concurring:

I agree with most of what the majority says, and also agree with the result it reaches.

However, I cannot agree with the majority’s conclusion that the United States Supreme Court has declared that a conviction will not be upheld if the prosecution proves the whole of the corpus delicti of a crime and the existence of a confession from the defendant. Quite the contrary, it is my opinion that the court has carefully preserved that possibility. In Opper v. United States, 348 U.S. 84, 93 , 75 S.Ct. 158, 164 , 99 L.Ed. 101 (1954), the Court did state that where there was a confession, “the corroborative evidence need not be sufficient, independent of the statements, to establish the corpus delicti.” The Court did not say that a conviction could not stand if the prosecution did show the corpus delicti independent of the statements.

In Smith v. United States, 348 U.S. 147, 153-54 , 75 S.Ct. 194, 198 , 99 L.Ed. 192 (1954), the Court described the normal corpus delicti rule. Far from holding that the rule was abolished, the Court established a still further rule that gave somewhat greater protection where, as the Court said, there was not a tangible corpus de-licti. In that…

970 F.2d 583 36 Fed. R. Evid. Serv. 51 UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Raul LOPEZ-ALVAREZ, Defendant-Appellant. No. 88-5421. United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit. Argued and Submitted July 9, 1991. Decided July 8, 1992. Elsa Leyva, Torrance, Cal., for the defendant-appellant. John J. Carlton, Asst. U.S. Atty., Los Angeles, Cal., for plaintiff-appellee. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California. Before: REINHARDT and FERNANDEZ, Circuit Judges, and SMITH, * District Judge. REINHARDT, Circuit Judge: 1 Raul Lopez-Alvarez, a former Mexican state police officer, and two co-defendants 1 were convicted after a two-month jury trial of charges stemming from the kidnappings and murders of DEA Special Agent Enrique Camarena-Salazar and DEA informant Alfredo Zavala. The principal evidence against Lopez-Alvarez consisted of videotaped admissions he made to Abel Reynoso, an undercover DEA agent, and Jose Reyes Garcia-Alvarez, a DEA informant. The defense argued that these statements were lies that Lopez-Alvarez had made up in order to convince the agents, who were posing as criminals, that he had ties to the drug underworld. His…