The Boston defendant who was arrested by ICE agents outside the courthouse during his trial last week reportedly had his past drug trafficking charges tossed due to the Annie Dookhan lab scandal.
Wilson Martell-LeBron was detained by ICE agents last Thursday outside the Boston Municipal Court Central Edward W. Brooke Courthouse — following the start of his trial for allegedly making a false statement on an RMV application and possession of a forged RMV document.
The feds claim that he’s an undocumented immigrant from the Dominican Republic, who’s allegedly named Juan Carlos Baez. They arrested him mid-trial and brought him to a detention facility in Plymouth.
In the wake of that shocking mid-trial detainment, the BMC judge on Monday found an ICE agent in contempt after not showing up to court, and Martell-Lebron’s case was dismissed with prejudice “due to egregious and intentional prosecutorial misconduct” following ICE’s arrest.
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Martell-Lebron years ago faced drug charges in both Middlesex and Essex counties, according to reports.
He was found guilty in Middlesex Superior Court on two counts of cocaine trafficking and one count of heroin trafficking in 2009, and he was sentenced to up to 15 years in prison.
Meanwhile in Essex County, Martell-Lebron pleaded guilty to one count of cocaine trafficking and one count of heroin trafficking in 2009. That five-year sentence was to be served concurrently with the Middlesex sentence.
Then in 2017, those Essex County charges were vacated and dismissed with prejudice due to the Annie Dookhan drug lab scandal.
Between 2003 and 2011, chemist Annie Dookhan engaged in serious misconduct at a state drug lab that jeopardized the integrity of more than 20,000 cases in eastern Massachusetts.
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Because of Dookhan’s misconduct at the Hinton State Laboratory in Jamaica Plain, the Supreme Judicial Court ordered the dismissal with prejudice of thousands of drug cases. Martell-Lebron’s charges in Essex County were among those tossed cases.
“The Court’s finding(s) or judgment(s) on charge(s) 1 COCAINE, TRAFFICKING IN c94C 32E(b), 2 HEROIN/MORPHINE/OPIUM, TRAFFICKING IN c94C 32E(c), 3 DRUG, POSSESS CLASS C c94C 34, 4 DRUG, POSSESS CLASS D c94C 34 is/are vacated and these charges are ordered DISMISSED WITH PREJUDICE, per order of the Supreme Judicial Court (Gaziano, J.),” reads the court record.
Back to Monday, the Suffolk DA’s office said it was “dismayed and surprised when our prosecution of Wilson Martell-Lebron was interrupted by ICE apprehending him in the middle of our case.”
“As soon as we were made aware of the detention we contacted ICE and requested his return to court,” a spokesperson for the DA’s office said in a statement, adding, “Any claim that we were aware of an attempt to prevent Mr. Martell-Lebron from exercising his right to a trial is false… Federal authorities should not have detained him and interfered with our efforts to hold him accountable.”
Special Agent Brian Sullivan was found to be in contempt, but he was not held in contempt because he didn’t appear in court on Monday.
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“He sought relief from the United States Attorney’s Office to prevent his appearance to answer for why he disappeared Wilson Martell-Lebron in the middle of his trial,” attorney Ryan Sullivan, who is on the defendant’s legal team, said in a statement.
“As for what we are calling on ICE to do, we are calling on them to respect the process of the law afforded to all individuals inside of the United States, regardless of their immigration status,” he added. “We are calling on them to not seek to uproot and ignore the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article 12 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights to have a fair trial, or the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States constitution, guaranteeing due process. We can think of no greater failure of the rule of law than the government conspiring to kidnap a person in the middle of their trial seeking to demonstrate their innocence.”
Suffolk DA Kevin Hayden on Tuesday will hold a press conference on the ICE detention of Martell-Lebron.
This ICE arrest comes after Tufts graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk was grabbed off the street by ICE agents and shipped to a Louisiana facility. Ozturk, a PhD student and Fulbright Scholar from Turkey who was here on a student visa, was taken into custody by federal agents on the sidewalk outside her off-campus apartment in Somerville.
Ozturk in a past op-ed criticized the university’s administration after the Tufts Senate passed resolutions about the “Palestinian genocide” and divesting from companies with ties to Israel. The Department of Homeland Security said she was arrested because of her alleged “support of Hamas,” but has not provided further information.
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Former state chemist Annie Dookhan. (Herald file photo)
Happy Tuesday! While today started off dry, we’re already looking at snow out there across the area. While this event will primarily stay as rain on the Cape and islands, it will be an icy mix of snow, ice and rain for the rest of us.
The rain/snow line will continue to advance from the south to the north as the evening progresses. Before the changeover, there will be a quick coating to 2 inches for most of our area.
The threshold between the snow and rain will feature sleet and freezing rain, leading to that icing.
For the rest of the night, there will primarily be rain with continued pockets of freezing rain, leading to increasing spotty ice accretion. Be extremely careful on roads, especially since switching between rain and freezing rain can wash off any road salt.
The rain and freezing rain will exit by 6 a.m. Wednesday, but temperatures will still be close to freezing during the morning commute, so watch out for some spotty black ice.
The rest of Wednesday will be really nice! Highs will warm up to the mid 50s with the help of ample sun.
Thursday we start off in the mid 20s and top off in the mid 40s. We’ll be partly sunny with another chance for some wintry weather Thursday night. This primarily looks like some rain and freezing rain, rather than the triple threat with snow too. We’ll keep an eye on that for you.
That will continue into Friday morning. The rest of Friday: cloudy with a chance for a spot shower and highs cooler again in the upper 30s. Saturday will be dry, breezy and cloudy but gorgeous near 50 degrees! There’s a chance for some rain showers Saturday night. Don’t forget to set your clocks forward an hour before you to go bed!
Sunday we start the day mild in the 40s and make it all the way into the upper 50s with more sun. Monday and Tuesday both look bright and in the 60s! Stay tuned.
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With a widening conflict in the Middle East after the American and Israeli attack on Iran Saturday, global markets are bracing for a shakeup in the energy supply chain.
So, here at home, what can consumers expect at the gas pump?
An increase in oil prices is almost always followed by an increase in gas prices. And the oil market has already reacted to the war. NBC News reported on Sunday that U.S. crude oil initially spiked more than 10%, while Brent, the international oil benchmark, rose as much as 13%.
Early Monday morning, reports were coming in of black smoke rising from the U.S. embassy in Kuwait City.
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While Iran’s oil reserves supply less than an estimated 5% of global production, the main concern is the Strait of Hormuz. This maritime passageway borders Iran at the bottleneck of the Persian Gulf, and more than 20% of the world’s oil passes through. If Iran closes or restricts Hormuz, the oil market could face severe disruptions.
Gas prices rise about 2.5 cents for every dollar increase in crude oil prices. As of Sunday, U.S. crude oil prices had already increased by nearly $5 a barrel.
“I fully expect that by Monday night, you could credibly say that gas prices are being impacted by oil prices having gone up,” GasBuddy analyst Patrick De Haan told NBC News.
GasBuddy characterizes their expectations for price increases as “incremental” rather than “explosive”. The group said to anticipate a potential 10-15 cent increase over the next couple of weeks.
