MANHATTAN (CN) — A New York federal judge on Wednesday afternoon sentenced former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández to 45 years in prison for his role in facilitating a state-sponsored international cocaine trafficking conspiracy.
Jurors convicted Hernández on all counts in March, finding he conspired with cartel-backed drug traffickers while he was in office to transport truckloads of South American cocaine through the small Central American country.
At trial prosecutors accused him of dispatching heavily armed security for the drug shipments; providing the cartel with intelligence about law enforcement logistics; and literally paving specific Honduran roads to expedite the transport of cocaine.
“He retained his perch through cocaine and corruption,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacob H. Gutwillig said Wednesday, requesting that Hernández be sentenced to life in prison plus an additional 30 years.
At the conclusion of the two-hour hearing, Hernández leaned over at the defense table toward the Spanish-speaking press in the jury box and told them, “Soy innocente,” before being led out of court by U.S. Marshals.
That was after Hernández spoke for nearly an hour at the hearing, fuming that he had not been given credit for reducing the international transshipment of drugs from South America through Honduras during his administration, from 90% of all northbound drugs down to just 4%.
Repeatedly proclaiming his innocence during the hearing, Hernández called his criminal prosecution “an outrage and a lynching.”
“This is a political persecution by drug traffickers and politicians,” he said, speaking through the Spanish language interpreter seated next to him at the defense table.
He accused the U.S. Attorney’s Office of hypocrisy for giving lenient sentences to the convicted murders who testified against him while not recognizing his efforts as president of Honduras to take down drug cartels.
Hernández also accused the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency of corruption and retaliation against him, “because they liked letting stuff happen” in Honduras, he said.
Wearing a tan prison uniform to the sentencing hearing, with one foot in a black medical brace boot, Hernandez walked with a wooden cane as he exited the courtroom.
In administering the sentence on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel, a George W. Bush appointee, noted that Hernández’s drug trafficking conspiracy benefited from the appearance of his being an anti-drug-trafficking crusader — all while he provided protection and support for select cartels who paid him bribes.
“The number one goal was his own political survival,” the judge said. “He agreed to provide the protection he did wherever he could…If this became untenable, then he would allow public action against the drug traffickers.”
Castel ordered Hernández to pay an $8 million fine along with his forfeiture of all property derived from the proceeds of the drug trafficking conspiracy. He faced a maximum fine of $10 million.
Hernández's sentence is five years higher than the 40-year mandatory minimum sentence he requested, which his lawyers said was still tantamount to life in prison for the 55-year-old former president.
“Mr. Hernández maintains his innocence and intends to fight to clear his name,” court-appointed defense attorney Renato Stabile wrote in a sentencing submission. “He was convicted based on little more than the word of some of Honduras’s most notorious drug cartel leaders and murderers.”
Federal prosecutors wanted Hernández's sentence to match the one Castel imposed against Juan Orlando Hernández’s brother, Tony Hernández, who was convicted in 2019.
“For more than a decade, the defendant presided over this vicious cycle of corruption and drug trafficking that destabilized Honduras and damaged countless American and Honduran lives,” Southern District of New York prosecutors wrote in their sentencing submission. “He did this by protecting his drug trafficking co-conspirators from prosecution and extradition, giving safe harbor to violent, massive cocaine traffickers as they used Honduras as a springboard for pumping cocaine into the United States, protected by machine guns and destructive devices, while also destroying their own community.”
Prosecutors also asked the judge to order Juan Orlando Hernández to pay $15,525,000 in forfeiture in addition to the $10 million maximum fine.
Hernández pledged to appeal his conviction and asked the judge to recommend he be allowed to stay at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn to prepare his timely appeal with his court-ordered counsel.
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