FBI foils plot to assassinate federal judge

ROMA - A jailed drug smuggler tried to pay someone to assassinate a local federal judge that sent him to prison, according to court documents The Monitor obtained Tuesday.

Investigators accuse Roma resident Joel Lopez of offering $2 million to a fellow inmate late last year to kidnap and kill U.S. District Judge Ricardo H. Hinojosa, a Rio Grande City native whose offices are in McAllen.

Their plan was discovered when the inmate reported the plot to the FBI and participated in a sting operation that also netted Lopez's common-law wife, Aracely Gonzalez.

"Any time someone threatens the judicial process, we're going to jump to it," San Antonio-based FBI spokesman Eric Vasys said.

PLOT UNFOLDS

Federal authorities would say little about the failed assassination plot Tuesday.

But during a detention hearing in Gonzalez's case last week, the FBI outlined an extensive murder-for-hire plot against Hinojosa and several others who had allegedly wronged the couple over the past several years.

According to court documents, Lopez first approached the inmate in August, asking him to kill the judge and a Roma waitress - a family friend with ties to the norteño band Grupo Duelo.

The woman reportedly owed Lopez thousands of dollars and had failed to pay despite previous threats on her life.

Lopez is currently serving a life sentence for his role in a drug-running and money-laundering ring based in Starr County. He was charged in 2003, along with 23 other purported members. Hinojosa presided over his trial.

Lopez allegedly told the inmate his wife would help coordinate the hits and could pass messages between them during the planning stages, FBI Special Agent Scott Payne testified during the hearing.

But before reaching out to Gonzalez, the man reported the conversation to authorities.

"He was worried," Payne said. "This is big and he didn't want to be a part of this."

Over the next seven months, however, agents convinced the inmate to make contact with Gonzalez in a series of friendly meetings. Each time, the 55-year-old home healthcare nurse surprised undercover authorities with how easily she discussed the planned killings, Payne said.

"The only hesitancy was in the very beginning, when she didn't know who our cooperator was," he said. "We were kind of shocked actually."

At every meeting, Gonzalez allegedly greeted the killer with hugs and kisses on the cheek. And in one case, she purportedly attended a party with the targeted waitress immediately after a meeting to discuss the woman's death.

When the inmate asked whether Gonzalez and Lopez would still be coming up with the $2 million for Hinojosa's head, authorities say she laughed and put the plan on hold.

"She said they didn't have that kind of money right now," Payne said.

STILL UNCHARGED

Gonzalez's attorney, Eric Jarvis, has since argued his client maintained a nonchalant attitude about the murders because she was not aware of exactly what was being planned.

She appeared to go along with the plot because she was afraid of what the inmate might do if she didn't, he said.

"If some guy that's just been released from prison with jailhouse tattoos shows up at your house," he said last week, "what the hell are you supposed to do?"

On March 5, agents took the waitress to a secure location to simulate a kidnapping and gave the former inmate $100,000 as a decoy ransom. Gonzalez was arrested after she allegedly accepted her half of the money from the hit.

Lopez has not been charged in planning the deaths of any of his alleged targets. His wife only faces charges in connection with the plot to kill the waitress.

U.S. Attorneys did not respond to inquiries Tuesday as to whether Gonzalez could face further charges in connection with the plot against Hinojosa, or whether Lopez could soon face any charges in connection with the plots.

Since her arrest March 7, Gonzalez has been held without bond. If convicted in connection with the contract killing plot against the waitress, she faces a minimum of 10 years in federal prison.

It's not clear how much more jail time a assassination plot against a federal judge might net.

PROTECTING JUDGES

Hinojosa was appointed to the bench by Ronald Reagan in 1983 and currently serves on the U.S. Sentencing Commission, the body charged with oversight of federal sentencing policies.

In 2006, his name was mentioned as a possible candidate to replace former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. However, the position eventually went to current Justice Samuel Alito.

Hinojosa declined to comment Tuesday about the assassination plot or allegations against the couple.

But federal judges are commonly the targets of violent threats, according to the U.S. Marshals Service, an agency charged with protecting federal courts and hunting fugitives.

Marshals report an average of 700 inappropriate communications or threats against judges a year. Already, the agency has logged 503 since the start of the 2008 fiscal year.

Few of those plots ever get off the ground, though. Only three federal judges have died at an assassin's hands since 1900.

Their ranks include John Howland Wood Jr., a San Antonio-based judge killed by contract assassin Charles Harrelson in 1979.

Harrelson, the father of actor Woody Harrelson, was incarcerated for several years in the Rio Grande Valley before Wood's death for a 1968 murder in Edinburg. He died of natural causes last year in a maximum-security federal prison.

Because of Harrelson's case, every threat against a federal judge is now taken seriously, FBI spokesman Vasys said.

"This is a region of the world where we've had a judge killed," he said. "If you don't address (these threats), everyone's at risk."