Mexico Under Siege

'NARCO-LAWYER' SLAYINGS HIGHLIGHT WEAKNESS IN THE JUSTICE SYSTEM

Silvia Raquenel Villanueva, once hailed here as "the Bulletproof
Lawyer," could outrun the bullets no longer.

Villanueva, one of Mexico's most controversial attorneys, was shopping
in Monterrey in August when hooded gunmen with automatic weapons
tracked her down amid stalls of handbags, perfume and videos, then
pumped more than a dozen shots into her body.

The killers delivered a final shot to the head before fleeing the
covered market, busy with shoppers at midday on a Sunday.

Villanueva, 56, a single mother known for her combative courtroom
manner and for having survived four attacks, was probably the best
known among the ranks of Mexican lawyers who practice a particularly
dicey specialty: defending accused drug lords.

That club shrank even more later that month, when killers slit the
throat of another prominent defense lawyer, Americo Delgado, as he
left his home office outside Mexico City. There have been no arrests
in either slaying, and Mexican authorities have offered no motives.
Officials have not said whether they believe the cases are related.

The unsolved killings have focused attention on the lives of the
so-called narcoabogados, or "narco-lawyers" -- important but
often-overlooked players in the drug wars that have roiled Mexico for
nearly three years. The evolution of narco-lawyers and the violence
they increasingly face highlight the weaknesses of a judicial system
that is all too often manipulated by powerful drug cartels.

These attorneys range from respected legal whizzes hired to find soft
spots in government indictments to briefcase-toting henchmen who take
advantage of their jail access to help clients run their drug
businesses from behind bars. Some jailed kingpins have employed dozens
of lawyers at a time, in part to manage far-flung enterprises: buying
and selling properties, paying smugglers, bribing police.

Few drug lawyers seek publicity because of a stigma that often leaves
them shunned by colleagues with tamer client lists. Big-name law firms
frequently assign rookie staffers to such cases.

It can be dangerous work -- attorneys complain they are increasingly
caught up in the country's drug violence. Triggermen might be sent by
a rival cartel, dirty cops or even a client disgruntled with the way
his case is proceeding.

"They don't want to hear explanations. They hire the lawyer and want a
secure outcome, whatever it costs," said Cesar Luis Vea Vea, president
of a lawyers federation in the northwestern state of Sinaloa, a
drug-trafficking hot spot. "Declining to take on a client can also
have risks."

When slayings occur, some say, authorities do little to solve
them.

Yet the fees for handling drug cases can be intoxicating, and it
doesn't always take superior courtroom skills to win a client's
release (a favored method in Mexico is through a judicial ordercalled
an amparo). In an opaque justice system rife with corruption, who you
know may matter more than what you know about the law.

Drug suspects "seek lawyers who are known to have special influence,"
said Vea, a former judge.

Villanueva defied many of the usual rules. She went public on behalf
of her clients and seemed ever willing to take on more, no matter how
radioactive. She represented members of rival cartels. Salty-tongued
but devoutly religious, she was a rare woman in a criminal-defense bar
dominated by men. Villanueva saved her sharpest comments for corrupt
Mexican politicians, and often said they were less trustworthy than
drug capos.

When she was killed Aug. 9, Villanueva had a file cabinet full of
incendiary cases, including that of a former top federal police
official, Javier Herrera Valles. He was jailed last year for allegedly
helping traffickers after dismissing the government's drug war as a
failure and accusing his boss, public safety chief Genaro Garcia Luna,
of corruption.

Villanueva also once represented the man whose testimony helped lead
to the 1996 capture of Juan Garcia Abrego, the former chief of the
Gulf cartel now imprisoned in the United States. Her recent client
list included Noe Ramirez Mandujano, who is charged with taking bribes
from Sinaloa traffickers while running the federal attorney general's
organized-crime unit.

"She had many open fronts," said Ricardo Ravelo, a Mexico City
journalist who interviewed Villanueva for a 2006 book called "Los
Narcoabogados."

Villanueva reached folk-hero status after surviving a bombing of her
Monterrey office and three shootings from 1998 to 2001. At the time of
her death, she bore bullet wounds in her legs, stomach, head and
buttocks. Mexican songwriters composed ballads, or corridos, in honor
of Villanueva's exploits, calling her the "Lady of Steel" as well as
"the Bulletproof Lawyer."

But persistent whispers circulated that her legal work crossed the
line into criminal activity. Villanueva was arrested in 2006 in
connection with the kidnapping and killing of a federal police
official, but was never convicted. She remained unapologetic.

"I'm a lawyer. I don't agree with what my clients do," she told a
Mexican newspaper five months before she died.

By contrast, Delgado, who was knifed outside an office he kept in the
state of Mexico, plied his trade quietly. Bookish and unflashy in his
suit and sensible shoes, the 81-year-old attorney looked more college
dean than ace drug lawyer.

Delgado, who like Villanueva was from industrial Monterrey, was
considered the go-to expert on extradition cases and was thought to be
close to victory in fighting the transfer of Benjamin Arellano Felix,
a leader of the Tijuana-based cartel that bears his family's name.
Arellano Felix was arrested in Mexico in 2002 and convicted on
drug-trafficking and money-laundering charges, but is still sought by
U.S. authorities. At one time, he had 41 registered lawyers.

Delgado also successfully fought a U.S. extradition request for Jesus
Amezcua, a trafficker from the state of Colima known as one of the
"methamphetamine kings."

Associates and others who knew Delgado say he was well aware of the
perils of his craft and refrained from promising too much or
overcharging.

"He used to say, 'I don't belong to them nor get involved with them,'
" said Arturo Arredondo, a Monterrey lawyer who grew up with Delgado
and remained close until the Aug. 28 slaying. "He was a
technician."

Last year, Delgado was honored for his long legal career by the
National Autonomous University of Mexico and a national lawyers federation.

The circumstances of his killing -- a knife assault by three men --
looked more like a robbery than one of Mexico's bullet-riddled gang
hits.

But he may have been targeted because of a bloody rivalry between
gangs. Delgado most recently served as defense lawyer for Alfredo
Beltran Leyva, a suspected kingpin from Sinaloa. Beltran Leyva's
faction has been at war with former allies led by Joaquin "El Chapo"
Guzman, Mexico's top fugitive.

"To take the case of an important figure, a figure at war with the
organization to which he used to belong, is extremely risky," Ravelo
said.

During the last year, Delgado may have been in contact with
Villanueva, the slain attorney whose former client helped bring down
onetime Gulf cartel kingpin Garcia Abrego, Ravelo said. Delgado had
been working to win the return of Garcia Abrego on grounds that he was
handed to U.S. authorities illegally after his 1996 capture in Mexico.

The killings of the two attorneys have generated fear among people
close to the pair. Colleagues at Villanueva's law office, a modest,
olive-green house decorated with religious-themed paintings and
sculptures, declined to be interviewed. Delgado's family also demurred.

Lawyers in Monterrey have called on authorities in the state of Nuevo
Leon to do more to solve the killings, as well as the slayings of
other colleagues who handled drug cases. Two were former associates of
Villanueva.

"It seems to us very strange that in Nuevo Leon all the crimes against
lawyers are unsolved, and we don't know the motives," said Adolfo
Trevino, who heads the local lawyers association. "It's due to
deficiencies in the investigation."

Lawyers have also been slain in the states of Sinaloa, Guanajuato and
Morelos. In March 2008, gunmen stormed a law office in the city of
Guadalajara and killed seven attorneys. The firm represented a son of
Guzman, the Sinaloa cartel leader, and had defended Gen. Jose de Jesus
Gutierrez Rebollo, who was Mexico's drug czar until he was arrested in
1997 on charges of helping the so-called Juarez cartel.

A lawyer who turned up dead in Guanajuato in August appeared in a
YouTube video posted later in which he confessed to working for La
Familia, a violent drug-trafficking gang. The attorney, Jesus Armando
Mancera, said his job was to demand extortion payments from merchants
and vendors of pirated CDs and other goods.

More than 13,000 people nationwide have died since President Felipe
Calderon launched a war on the drug cartels in December 2006. Though
lawyers -- along with prosecutors and judges -- represent a small
percentage of that toll, attacks on them underscore the ability of the
cartels to strike back at the judiciary system.

The risks inspire a cloak-and-dagger existence for major-league drug
lawyers. A Sinaloa attorney who handles big-time drug cases asked a
pair of Times journalists to turn off their cellphones during a
meeting at a restaurant in Culiacan recently, fearing an active line
might steer enemies to his location. Two associates sat watch as he
discussed his work on condition that neither he nor his clients be
identified.

The lawyer, from a poorer part of Mexico, moved to Culiacan to attend
college, and, following law school, began with nickel-and-dime cases
in the local courts. After a few victories, he caught the eye of
drug-cartel representatives and accepted their offer of work.

He exudes nervous energy -- pacing, whispering into one of his three
cellphones, giving away little about where he is going or who he will
see.

Drug clients, like his, bring in the kind of handsome fees that can
pay for top-shelf office space in Culiacan's pricey Old Town section.
But they also play havoc with a lawyer's nerves, often ignoring his
best legal advice while making it clear that there is no option but to
win.

"If they think you have done them wrong, it's . . . " the attorney
said. He finished by drawing his finger across his throat.