A Mexican Mafia leader was convicted Wednesday of murdering three men and ordering hits on eight others in the first death penalty case tried in Los Angeles federal court in half a century.
The verdict, reached after 26 days of jury deliberations, sets the stage for penalty proceedings in which Mariano "Chuy" Martinez, a 42-year-old father of two, could be sentenced to death or to life without parole.
Members of Martinez's family sobbed softly as a court clerk read the jury's verdicts, convicting him on 24 of 25 criminal counts, including racketeering, murder, conspiracy to murder, assault with a dangerous weapon and drug trafficking.
U.S. District Judge David O. Carter ordered the jury to return next Wednesday, when the penalty phase will begin. The jury's decision is binding on the judge.
Prosecutors and defense lawyers declined comment on Wednesday's verdicts. Both sides said they will have nothing to say until after the penalty trial.
Martinez, a stocky man with a bushy mustache, was one of 43 reputed Mexican Mafia members and associates indicted by a grand jury in 1999. Federal prosecutors have charged nine other defendants with capital crimes.
Prosecutors described Martinez as the highest-ranking Mexican Mafia leader in the Los Angeles area, and said he took orders directly from the gang's so-called godfather, Benjamin Peters, who is serving a life sentence at Pelican Bay State Prison in Northern California.
The Mexican Mafia, also known as La Eme, was founded during the late 1950s by a group of inmates from East Los Angeles in an attempt to control drug trafficking behind prison walls.
Over the years, authorities say, La Eme extended its reach throughout the prison system and into the streets of Southern and Central California, extorting "taxes" from neighborhood gangs engaged in small-time drug dealing.
Although Martinez was the ranking Mexican Mafia leader in Los Angeles, he faced a challenge to his authority from another high-level gang member, John Turscak.
Bitter and sometimes violent warfare erupted between the two sides in 1997. Martinez survived two murder attempts by Turscak's crew, according to trial testimony.
In November 1998, prosecutors said, Richard Serrano, a reputed drug dealer and close associate of Turscak, was spotted in an auto body shop on Olympic Boulevard in Montebello.
