Source: United States Department of Justice News
Sean P. Costello, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama, announced that Enrique Miranda Martinez was sentenced on August 4, 2022 to twenty years imprisonment for trafficking methamphetamine. Martinez plead not guilty and was convicted by a federal jury in April 2022 of conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine and possession of methamphetamine with the intent to distribute. The convictions followed a three-day trial before United States District Judge Terry F. Moorer.
Testimony at the April 2022 jury trial of Martinez established that Martinez and a co-defendant, Yuri Maikel Hernandez Perez, were stopped on Interstate 10 in Baldwin County in June, 2020. The traffic stop lead to the recovery of close to four kilograms of nearly pure methamphetamine in the lining of a cooler on the back seat of the Mercedes SUV that Martinez was driving. The insulation for the cooler had been removed and the methamphetamine was packed in vacuum sealed bags and placed in the area where the insulation had been removed from the cooler.
Martinez testified at the trial and claimed to have no knowledge of the drugs in the vehicle he was driving. Evidence at the trial included a picture from a Wal-Mart in Tucson, Arizona, taken several days before the traffic stop in Baldwin County, showing Martinez purchasing a vacuum sealer of the same brand as the brand of bags the drugs were sealed in. An expert DEA agent testified that the overwhelming majority of methamphetamine trafficked in the United States comes across the border from Mexico. A large amount of the methamphetamine first goes to stash houses in the United States in cities close to the Mexican border like Tucson, where it is then distributed further into the United States.
The co-defendant, Yuri Maikel Hernandez Perez, plead guilty to the charges in April 2022 and is scheduled to be sentenced on August 15, 2022.
U.S. Attorney Sean P. Costello praised the dedication and the outstanding investigative work of the federal and local investigative agencies and his prosecutors involved in the case. Costello said, “The Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office does an outstanding job interdicting drugs and investigating other illegal activities on the highways in Baldwin County, and their partnership with our local, state, and federal partners is a cornerstone in fighting crime in the Southern District of Alabama.”
This case was investigated by the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security Investigations, and the Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office.
The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys George F. May and Alex Lankford.