<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<div class="container content-width3" style="--font-size:20px;">
<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element"> <font
size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://theintercept.com/2019/06/12/felony-trial-of-no-more-deaths-volunteer-scott-warren-ends-in-mistrial/">https://theintercept.com/2019/06/12/felony-trial-of-no-more-deaths-volunteer-scott-warren-ends-in-mistrial/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Felony Trial of No More Deaths
Volunteer Scott Warren Ends in Mistrial</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">Ryan Devereaux - June 12,
2019</div>
</div>
<hr>
<div class="content">
<div class="moz-reader-content line-height4 reader-show-element">
<div id="readability-page-1" class="page">
<div data-reactid="205">
<p><u>Twelve jurors walked</u> into the federal courthouse
in Tucson, Arizona, Tuesday afternoon with a problem.
Two weeks after the U.S. government began to argue its
case in the prosecution of Scott Warren, a border-based
humanitarian aid volunteer accused of two counts of
felony harboring and one count of conspiracy, the jurors
could not come to a unanimous decision as to whether he
was innocent or guilty.</p>
<p>The previous afternoon, the jurors had sent a letter to
District Judge Raner Collins, informing him that they
were deadlocked. Collins ordered them to go back and try
again. By Tuesday, they were still stuck. Eight jurors
believed Warren was innocent on all counts. Four
believed he was guilty. They sent Collins another note,
and, at 1:33 p.m., they reentered his courtroom. The
judge asked the jurors if they all believed that further
deliberation would fail to yield a unanimous decision.
On that point, they were all in agreement: The jury was
hung.</p>
</div>
<div data-reactid="207">
<p>“I want to thank you for your time and your attention,”
Collins said, and with that, he dismissed the jurors,
and one of the most important trials involving
humanitarian aid on the U.S.-Mexico border in recent
memory came to an end.</p>
<p>Nineteen months after his arrest, Warren’s case had
drawn international attention and outrage, with United
Nations human rights experts and advocacy organizations
from around the world decrying the prosecution as a
blatant attack on humanitarian aid in a region where
thousands of migrants have died — and continue to die —
in the desert.</p>
<p>Despite the mistrial, the government has not dropped
the charges against Warren, a 36-year-old geographer
from Ajo, Arizona. The possibility of a retrial is still
alive, with Warren facing up to 20 years in prison if
convicted on all counts and sentenced to consecutive
terms. A status meeting in the case is scheduled for
early July.</p>
<p>“The government put on its best case with the full
force of countless resources, and 12 jurors could not
agree with that case,” defense attorney Greg Kuykendall
told reporters Tuesday. “Scott Warren remains innocent
as a legal and as a factual matter, because the jury
could not conclude otherwise,” he added. “We remain
devoted today in our commitment to defend Scott’s
lifelong devotion to providing humanitarian aid.”</p>
<p>Warren was arrested on January 17, 2018, at a
humanitarian aid facility in Ajo known as the Barn, some
40 miles above the border, in one of the deadliest
stretches of the Sonoran Desert for migrants making
their way north. Owing to a Clinton-era border strategy
known as Prevention Through Deterrence, which
intentionally funnels migrants into the most dangerous
areas of the desert and remains the foundation of modern
American border enforcement to this day, a minimum of
3,000 people have died in the Arizona borderlands —
though the true total is guaranteed to be higher.</p>
<p>In 2014, Warren began building bridges between
humanitarian groups in southern Arizona, an effort to
focus aid work — including the delivery of food and
water, and search and recovery operations — in an area
where the effects of Prevention Through Deterrence have
been particularly brutal: the so-called West Desert,
also known as the Ajo corridor. In the years that
followed, these volunteers directly contributed to a
historic increase in the number of human remains and
bodies recovered in the region.</p>
<p>On the morning of Warren’s arrest, one of the groups
Warren volunteers with, the faith-based organization No
More Deaths, <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2018/01/17/u-s-border-patrol-systematically-destroyed-water-supplies-left-for-migrants-in-desert-report-says/">published</a>
a detailed report implicating the Border Patrol in the
destruction of jugs containing thousands of gallons of
water left for migrants crossing the desert over
multiple years. The report included video evidence.
Hours after it was published, a pair of plainclothes
Border Patrol agents set up a surveillance post across
from the Barn. There they spotted Warren with two
individuals they suspected were undocumented.</p>
<p>“Toncs at the barn,” agent Brendan Burns <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2018/04/30/were-gonna-take-everyone-border-patrol-targets-prominent-humanitarian-group-as-criminal-organization/">wrote</a>
in a group text, using Border Patrol slang for
migrants; some believe it refers to the sound a
flashlight makes when it connects with a human skull.</p>
<p>The “toncs” Burns referred to were 23-year-old Kristian
Perez-Villanueva, of El Salvador, and 20-year-old José
Arnaldo Sacaria-Goday, of Honduras. The pair had left
their countries separately. Perez-Villanueva hoped to
seek asylum. Sacaria-Goday was homeless. They were
strangers when they met in a Mexican border town. They
became close and crossed the border together. They spent
two nights in the desert, where they were chased by
immigration agents and tossed their backpacks and
supplies, including their food.</p>
<p>Backed up by a caravan of law enforcement vehicles, the
agents in the wash descended on the Barn and placed
Warren and the two young men under arrest. The following
month, Warren was indicted by a grand jury. While Warren
was released on his own recognizance after a night in
Border Patrol custody, Perez-Villanueva and
Sacaria-Goday were not. The government detained the pair
as material witnesses in its case for several weeks,
then deported them once their depositions were taken.</p>
<p>As The Intercept reported in a <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2019/05/04/no-more-deaths-scott-warren-migrants-border-arizona/">yearlong
investigation</a> published in May, Warren’s felony
case was the culmination of an escalating law
enforcement crackdown against humanitarian volunteers in
southern Arizona that began <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2017/06/17/arizona-border-patrol-raid-surveillance-no-more-deaths-humanitarian-immigration/">shortly
after</a> President Donald Trump’s inauguration.</p>
<p>Warren was also <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2018/01/23/no-more-deaths-arizona-border-littering-charges-immigration/">one
of nine</a> No More Deaths volunteers hit with federal
misdemeanor littering charges in 2017 for leaving food,
water, and other humanitarian aid supplies on a federal
wildlife reserve outside Ajo, where migrants routinely
die. The <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2019/01/17/no-more-deaths-border-documents-trial/">first
trial</a> in those cases, held in January, resulted in
four No More Deaths volunteers convicted and sentenced
to 15 months of probation and ordered to pay $250 in
fines. A second group of volunteers facing misdemeanor
charges accepted similar consequences days later, and
the charges against them were formally dismissed.</p>
<p>Warren’s <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2019/05/14/no-more-deaths-trial-migrant-bodies-border/">misdemeanor
trial</a> was held last month. Judge Collins has yet
to issue a decision in that case.</p>
<p>Following the jury’s dismissal Tuesday, Warren’s
friends and family filtered out into the hallway on the
fifth floor of the courthouse, many unclear on what
would happen next.</p>
<p>“Scott wanted to resume his life,” Mark Warren, Scott’s
father, told The Intercept. “This has been the focus of
Scott’s life for such a long time now, and it’s all
encompassing. It’s not like it’s just something that’s
happening to me over here — it’s everything.”</p>
</div>
<div data-reactid="217">
<p>As Warren’s family and supporters awaited new
information, Kuykendall and his co-counsel, Amy Knight,
were given the rare opportunity to speak with the jurors
about the case at length. The defense attorneys told The
Intercept they left the conversation with the impression
that the deliberations in the case were serious and the
jurors’ recaps of the process were specific.</p>
<p>When Warren stepped out of the courthouse Tuesday
afternoon, he was greeted by a throng of press, friends,
and supporters. Standing before the cameras and
microphones, he immediately addressed the issues that
matter to him most. “Since my arrest in January 2018, at
least 88 bodies were recovered from the Ajo corridor of
the Arizona desert. We know that’s a minimum number and
that many more are out there and have not been found,”
Warren told the crowd. “The government’s plan, in the
midst of this humanitarian crisis? Policies to target
undocumented people, refugees, and their families;
prosecutions to criminalize humanitarian aid, kindness,
and solidarity.”</p>
<p>As he wrapped up his brief remarks, Warren turned his
focus to the people who have supported him and to the
people who have been lost from his story. “I’ve received
enormous support from family, friends, lawyers, and my
community. Thank you to everyone, and I want to say that
I love you all very, very much,” he said. “The other men
that were arrested with me that day, José Sacaria-Goday
and Kristian Perez-Villanueva, have not received the
attention and outpouring of support that I have. I do
not know how they are doing now, but I desperately hope
that they are safe.”</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div> </div>
</div>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863.9977
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://freedomarchives.org/">https://freedomarchives.org/</a>
</div>
</body>
</html>