FARGO (KFGO) – Arturo Guzman has been in federal custody for over seven months. He is one of 20 indicted co-conspirators in a massive drug conspiracy case spanning from Mexico to California to North Dakota slated to go to trial August 1, and on Thursday he asked a judge to reconsider an order that has kept him detained in the Cass County Jail since January.
Guzman was arrested in Idaho last September. He was in possession of methamphetamine and firearms and almost certainly en route between California and North Dakota where he was one of four sources Jessica Trottier used to import hundreds of pounds of drugs into cities and reservations across the state.
Guzman’s attorney David Dusek said he believed the trial would likely be delayed from its August 1 start date “for quite some time,” given the growing amount of discovery in the case. He told the court his office had already received 2.5 terabytes of data in the case, which would be the equivalent of 17 million documents or over a half a million images, with more expected to come.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Alex Stock said he couldn’t confirm the exact amount of discovery that would ultimately accrue, but acknowledged the trial date was likely to be moved due to continuances that had been filed by a number of the defendants. He said the mountain of discovery in the case is likely a combination of documents and images, but also includes phone data, due to the wiretap that agents on the case received permission from the Department of Justice to place on Trottier’s phone as a part of their investigation.
Dusek said Guzman was trying to better himself and had been accepted into a substance abuse program, which required him to reside at the treatment facility, necessitating his pre-trial release.
Stock outlined the government’s reasons for objecting to Guzman’s request, including new details not previously known about the case during the Thursday hearing. Stock said Guzman’s role in the conspiracy was particularly significant in that he was charged by Trottier with killing Dana Thomas, another indicted co-conspirator in the case, last summer. When Guzman neglected to follow through with the murder for hire, Trottier and Guzman had an expletive-laden text exchange, trading threats and arguing about payments, all captured on the federal wiretap.
Stock said Trottier later tried to hire other people in Grand Forks to kill Thomas, but law enforcement intervened in that case, only to have Thomas escape and go into hiding.
Stock said Trottier had “gotten in over her head” and was not always able to pay her suppliers in cash and instead frequently giving them guns and vehicles in return for drugs, a development with which Guzman’s superiors in Mexico had become unhappy.
Trottier was arrested last September after a high-profile raid in Fargo’s Hawthorne neighborhood. She is the only defendant charged in the murder-for-hire scheme as part of the case. At least two of the other defendants in the case, Hugo Yanez-Rivera and Carlos Batista-Rodriguez, were California-based drug sources for Trottier along with Guzman. Other defendants in the case are accused of aiding Trottier as part of a drug ring across North Dakota, including Bismarck, Devils Lake, Belcourt, and Grand Forks.
Guzman spoke briefly at the end of the hearing, trying to plead his case. He said the text messages read by Stock showed that he’d saved Thomas’s life by not going through with the murder for hire proposed by Trottier. Stock said the government considered Guzman a danger and a flight risk should he be released.
Judge Alice Senechal told Guzman that while his wish to enter treatment is an admirable one, the strength of the case against him along with his lack of ties to North Dakota and previous criminal history outweighed it, and denied Guzman’s request for pretrial release.
