Bovino murder-for-hire trial moving fast at federal courthouse, where it'll soon be in jurors' hands
One hundred and seventy minutes.
That’s how long it took federal prosecutors to make their case Wednesday that Juan Espinoza Martinez, 37, of Chicago offered $10,000 for the murder of U.S. Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino.
The feds say Espinoza Martinez became “fixated” on Bovino last October because he saw him as “the face of the threat” to the Little Village community. But to prove their allegations, prosecutors summoned only three witnesses to a 17th-floor courtroom at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse, who spent a little less than three hours on the witness stand, combined.
Closing arguments are expected Thursday morning, and then it’ll be up to the jury to decide whether it’s convinced that Espinoza Martinez is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Key to the case could be whether prosecutors have shown that he intended for the murder to be carried out.
The unusually swift trial is the first to result from the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation campaign in Chicago, known as Operation Midway Blitz.
“What the defendant did was a solicitation of murder,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Minje Shin told the jury during opening statements Wednesday. “And no matter what the reasons are, murder is murder and solicitation is a crime.”
The prosecution will likely hinge on the testimony of Adrian Jimenez. He’s the 44-year-old previously anonymous “source of information” who passed a message he’d received from Espinoza Martinez on to Homeland Security Investigations last fall.
Another crucial piece of evidence could be Espinoza Martinez’s Oct. 6 interview with federal agents. Jurors saw portions of that video-recorded interview Wednesday, in which a flustered and nervous Espinoza Martinez insisted, “I didn’t threaten anybody.”
Espinoza Martinez did not testify in his own defense. Instead, his attorneys summoned his younger brother, Oscar Martinez, as their lone witness. He testified for 24 minutes.
“Juan Martinez is not guilty,” defense attorney Jonathan Bedi told the jury during opening statements. “He’s not guilty because repeating neighborhood gossip is not a federal crime.”
Things were moving fast in Little Village last October, he said, and people in the community were sharing information with one another out of “self-preservation.”
Prosecutors say Espinoza Martinez sent Jimenez a picture of Bovino via Snapchat in early October. A message allegedly followed that said, “2k on info cuando lo agarren,” “10k if u take him down,” and “LK … on him.”
Jimenez testified Wednesday that he understood that to mean “$2,000 when they grab him … $10,000 if you kill him … Latin Kings are on him.”
Jimenez walked slowly and with a limp as he made his way to the witness stand Wednesday. He told the jurors he had back pain. But he still testified for an hour about his background and his interactions with Espinoza Martinez.
Jimenez said he was born in Mexico and came to the United States as a child. He became a legal permanent resident in 2017 and owns a small construction company. That’s how he got to know Espinoza Martinez, who also works in construction.
Because messages sent by Snapchat disappear after they’re read, and users are notified when screenshots are taken, Jimenez testified that he used another phone to take a photo of the message allegedly sent to him by Espinoza Martinez.
“Did [Espinoza Martinez] say that he was joking?” Shin asked.
Jimenez said he did not.
Jimenez also acknowledged that he’s been a longtime law enforcement source, working for local police as early as the mid-1990s before working with the Drug Enforcement Administration and Homeland Security Investigations. He said his relationship with Homeland Security goes back more than 15 years.
He also said he was convicted of a felony around 2000 or 2001 and served a prison sentence that lasted until 2006.
Shin repeatedly tried to secure testimony from Jimenez about his conversations with Espinoza Martinez about federal immigration policy. But U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow sustained multiple objections from defense attorney Dena Singer.
Lefkow also barred key evidence from the trial last week after prosecutors said they would not try to prove Espinoza Martinez’s membership in the Latin Kings street gang.
Singer pressed Jimenez about whether he was a likely accomplice in the alleged crime. She did so after Bedi told jurors they would see no follow-up by Espinoza Martinez to suggest he was serious about the murder.
“You’re not somebody that commits murder for hire, right?” Singer asked Jimenez.
“Nope,” Jimenez replied.
“Juan never said to you, ‘Share this message and make sure that it gets out,’ right?” Singer pressed.
Jimenez said he did not.
Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent Chris Perugini took the stand to discuss Espinoza Martinez’s interview after his arrest. Espinoza Martinez, dressed in a yellow neon shirt, can be seen on the video sitting across from three federal agents.
The agents repeatedly ask him to explain how the message he’d allegedly sent to Jimenez shouldn’t be taken as a threat. Espinoza Martinez acknowledged that it looked bad, but he told the agents, “I made a mistake.”
“I’m not saying that I was telling them to do it,” Espinoza Martinez said. “I was just writing down information, like, ‘this is what’s going on.’”
Fellow Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent Donald Adams also testified, walking jurors through other potentially incriminating messages allegedly sent by Espinoza Martinez. Among them were the words “10k for his head” below a picture of Bovino.
He allegedly added “dead or alive” and “s--t serious.”
But Oscar Martinez later took the stand and told jurors he was on the other end of those messages from his brother. He said he’d seen chatter about the alleged bounty earlier on Facebook and thought his brother was “showing me what they were saying.”
Oscar Martinez also said he wrote “not worth 10k” back to his brother.
“You wrote that because you were trying to talk your brother out of it?” Shin asked during cross-examination.
“I wrote it because Bovino’s not worth 10k,” Oscar Martinez replied.
Contributing: Anna Savchenko