Arizona rancher gets hung jury, will not be retried
You might recall George Allen Kelly, the Nogales-area Arizona border rancher who was on trial for killing an illegal border crosser on his land. He was accused of shooting an “unarmed man” after he fired warning shots to deter what he claimed were a band of armed men on his land. The body was found January 30 last year, although the bullet that killed the illegal was not found. The prosecutor’s office says he will not be retried.
Last Monday, a judge declared a mistrial in the case after jurors were unable to reach consensus about whether to charge Kelly with second-degree murder and aggravated assault. He had pleaded not guilty.
Kelly was accused of shooting his AK-47 from a far distance at a group of migrants who were headed back across the border into Mexico. Prosecutors said Gabriel Cuen-Buitimea, 48, a migrant who lived just across the border in Nogales, Mexico, and was looking for work, was fatally struck. Law enforcement officials were never able to recover the bullet, and Kelly’s lawyers tried to make the point that another person may have shot him. No other weapon was discovered in the area. ABC News
Gotta be the FIRST illegal to head back home if he didn’t get work.
Kelly’s defense team maintains his innocence and says the prosecution was politically motivated. Briefly, Kelly and his wife say they saw armed men about 100 feet from their house, and that he fired warning shots from about 100 yards away. (Mr. Cuen-Buitema was killed by a single round to the chest.) Kelly supposed fired “8 or 9 AK rounds”. (Now, we know that either predominant AK round has a relatively poor trajectory for long ranges, but 100 yards is not long range – it’s a ZERO range. If he fired that many rounds AT the group there should be more casualties, tight?) The body was not discovered until hours later.
The defense said that seven jurors wanted to acquit Kelly, but one “lone holdout” was unwavering in wanting to convict the elderly rancher despite the evidence and testimony.
Dr. Ron Martinelli, a criminologist working pro bono for Kelly’s defense team, accused Santa Cruz County Attorney George Silva and Sheriff David Hathaway of “extreme confirmation bias” in their handling of the case, which centered on the death of Gabriel Cuen-Buitimea, a Mexican national found fatally shot on Jan. 30, 2023, after Kelly called Border Patrol for help from his 170-acre cattle ranch outside Nogales, Arizona. Fox News
Here’s an interesting accusation:
The defense believes that the people contacted by the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office to conduct their investigation into Kelly’s case are related or connected to the Sinaloa Cartel, Martinelli said. “The Sinaloa Cartel and Manos Malas, an organized crime ring which is in league with Sinaloa, do not allow independent drug smugglers. So you have to be associated with the cartel,” Martinelli said. “When they meet with him, that was actually facilitated by another convicted, twice convicted felon — one of his last convictions that he did prison time for was bringing guns across the border.” Fox News II
“And this trial, we believe, cost the citizens of Santa Cruz County over $1 million and thousands of man-hours in this case, and they can’t fix it,” he said. “Santa Cruz County is the most impoverished county in Arizona. Fox News
If you read some of the sheriff’s statements ripping neighboring county sheriffs who cooperate with the Border Patrol, this all would not surprise you. By the way, Hathaway, County Attorney DaSilva, and Michael Jette, a contract prosecutor, all blew off the crucial Monday session when the judge declared a mistrial. Wonder what they had to do that was more important than the highest profile case in the county?
Interesting articles, and they have far more info than space allows here.
Category: Legal
David, thanks for putting this information together for us. Concise and to the point!! Great result!
One quibble from the first quote: Juries don’t “charge” people, they convict or acquit people. Grand juries and DAs make charging decisions and he was obviously already charged with the crime or he wouldn’t have been on trial.
Layers and layers of editorial oversight…
If only we had more like him, we would have a lot less drug smuggling.
You can expect New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg to bring charges against him shortly for not completing his agreement with the Columbia House Record & Tape Club.
Or recording his payments to them as a business expense in his checkbook.
“….and one moving violation…”
Not to mention a Collections Agency for the $4.95 still owed on an old Montgomery Ward Card!
Oh, Lawdy! They hang on like a mad dawg!
Mexican officials whining about it like its their country here and it matters what they say, mostly because this might scare off dudes sending home 10% of Mexican GDP:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/mexican-officials-regret-us-decision-214810818.html
They don’t want their citizens killed, all they got to do is stop them for running drugs across the border
I live 35 miles north of the Mexican Border
It really is bad here and at time
Nerve racking
The stories I could tell
Just about got taken out on Fry Blvd a couple days ago by the Sheriff’s load car task force. 1 Cochise county deputy and 2 from Pinal headed after a car blasting through Palominas. Thought I was gonna die right in front of Dominos”s.
Ft Huachuca/Sierra (Sorry) Vista?
Benson area
Yup. Retired here and became an eebil, triple-dipping gubmint employee, feeding off your tax dollars.
Almost got hit by a car they were chasing back in January/February that wrecked just south of the checkpoint
We find there water jugs and backpacks and before I forget there carpet shoes all over the place here
Finding water jugs and backpacks…..oh, what a great opportunity for mayhem and mischief.
If found water jugs and backpacks are still full, a little cement emptied into the back packs,, mixed with the water found….
Drink what’s left of the water because concrete work will take it out of you. No need to worry about striking it off or finishing the edges.
It’s the stuff they dump when the load car picks them up. Usually driven by dumbasses from the Phoenix area. The cartels recruit via social media. Cochise county now has a multi-county task force trying to keep the highways safe. It’s fookin’ nuts.
Right out of one of the best movies of the past decade, Sicario.
The chick with the baby…
This is such a friggin’ mess…
Sounds like a good start, but I was thinking about laxatives in the water……
According to true detective type TV shows, eye drops aren’t too good for you either.
Not recommending anything.
Naughty boy!
Ain’t I though!
Same thing where I used to work outside of Green Valley, they pretty much trek in parallel to I-19 (and avoiding that huge permanent checkpoint).
Load car
These clowns are from last year
Calls for LAW enforcement…..
I have a ton of photos and video
But it won’t let me upload them
It won’t let me compress the photos anymore
Where does he go to get back the lawyers fees from the state’s ridiculous prosecution of the man?
They will say “small claims court”. The county/state/feds already have lawyers working on not paying him and stretching it out until he has passed.
But a lawyer represented him pro Bono, so there’s probably no legal fees to collect. There may be other expenses like paying someone to oversee the day to day ranch operations.
The prosecution’s case was extremely weak. Essentially, all they could prove was that the illegal alien had been shot and the trajectory was consistent with a shot fired from where the rancher said he fired. The “witness” description of the area wasn’t even close to resembling the actual location, the Santa Cruz county sheriff violated multiple state dept. regulations in bringing in this witness, no bullet was located, the defense shredded the rookie detective’s report, and 1 juror found him guilty. All he’s guilty of is maybe reckless discharge of a firearm.
How could the figure trajectory without knowledge of where the dead trespassing illegal was facing when hit?
It was “assumed” he was facing the ranch house. Bullet path lined up with that. But… couldn’t be proven.
From what I have heard, when civilians hear gunshots, they tend to turn away and move away from the sound of the shots, not face them.
Great news, but unfortunately, Mr. Kelly is going to have to spend what years he has left watching his back. The Sheriff and other county officials have lost face, so I can see both active and passive persecution of Mr. Kelly. You know, getting pulled over for having a license plate bulb burned out or speeding 47 in a 45mph zone. Then, if an incident occurs at the Kelly home, having a response time substantially slower than usual, because deputies were “preoccupied with a major incident across the county” or “hours had to be cut due to budget restrictions after the county absorbed the cost of the trial”.
The biggest threat, of course, will come from across the border, where there are doubtlessly people who think that justice wasn’t served. They might well know that it wasn’t Kelly’s bullet that killed the man, since they pulled the trigger, but that problematic gringo was supposed to spend the rest of his life in jail for daring to intervene in their plans last year.
So now what is the financial status of Rancher Kelly?
“The process is the punishment”, he may have won in court, but that’s no help if he’s now bankrupt.
“…shooting his AK-47 from a far distance…”
Wait? What!? AK47? Far distance? AKs aren’t built to shoot far distances. Unless it’s a case of prosecutor and reporter anti-gun make believe. (which is much more believable)
And the lesson to learn here? Unless you’re in a fire fight, and need resupply and other assistance, DON’T CALL THE PO-PO (#4 of The Four Esses). When/If you find the body later, leave it for the feral hogs or toss it in a DEEEEEP hole.
AMEN to that!!!!!
Would he not have to have charges dismissed with prejudice to avoid being charged again? It may have said in one of the linked articles but I missed it if so.
No. They will leave the charges pending, n case they get some “new evidence.”
Aaaaaah! The sword of Damocles’… still hanging by a hair.
Somebody got bought off.
Dox that f#%kwad.
Gotta be a libturd to look at the evidence and say my mind is made up, don’t confuse me with the facts.
Like my friend in Ft Worth that still thinks d-rats are the only people that are worthy of his vote…
Tucson news is reporting that the family of the dearly departed is considering a wrongful death lawsuit.
Let guess the Obama Hamas CLU will provide free legal services for the traffickers aka family
They did have the dumbass go north to send money home, of course. /sarc
I’m not sure there’s a word that would accurately describe my complete lack of give a shit for them…
Carpet shoes