Sentence overturned in border agent’s killing that exposed ‘Fast and Furious’ sting

PHOENIX — An appeals court on Friday overturned the district court’s ruling the belief A man convicted of murdering a U.S. Border Patrol agent whose death exposed the botched federal gun operation known as “Fast and Furious” has had his life sentence overturned, a U.S. appeals court said Friday.

The 9th United States Court of Appeals the convictions were overturned of Heraclio Osorio-Arellanes, because his constitutional right to a fair trial had been violated. He remanded the case to the U.S. District Court in Arizona for further proceedings.

Osorio-Arellanes was convicted in 2020 in the fatal shooting on December 14, 2010 in which Officer Brian Terry was shot and killed during a mission in Arizona.

Osorio-Arellanes was convicted of first-degree murder and other charges after being extradited from Mexico. He was one of seven suspects tried and convicted in Terry’s murder.

The appeals court said Osorio-Arellanes had confessed to “essential elements” of the U.S. government’s case against him during interrogation in a Mexico City jail.

On appeal, he argued that he was entitled to a new trial because his confession was taken in violation of his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself, as well as his Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel. He also argued that he did not receive a fair trial, and his attorney said he was illiterate and did not understand the proceedings.

The Obama administration was much criticism of the operation “Fast and Furious”in which U.S. federal agents allowed criminals to purchase firearms with the intention of tracing them to criminal organizations. But the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives lost track of most of the weapons, including two found at the scene of Terry’s death.

Terry, 40 and a former U.S. Marine, was part of a four-man team in an elite Border Patrol unit patrolling the southern Arizona desert on a mission to catch so-called “con artists” robbing drug smugglers. They came across a group and identified themselves as police officers.

The men refused to stop, prompting an officer to fire beanbags at them. Members of the group responded by firing AK-47-type assault rifles. Terry was hit in the back and died shortly afterward.

“Our ruling does not determine Osorio’s ultimate responsibility for his actions. The government can still retry this case,” the appeals court said in its new ruling. “Nevertheless, his direct appeal affirms the strength of our Constitution’s procedural protections for criminal defendants, which ‘are afforded to the innocent as well as the guilty.'”