A man who was arrested at a 2018 traffic stop after 18 pounds of methamphetamine were discovered in the car he was driving from California to Georgia was sentenced Thursday to five years and 10 months in prison by U.S. District Judge Billy Roy Wilson in Little Rock.
Marcelino Gonzalez, a South Carolina resident, and a companion, Jamileth Caceres, from Georgia, were stopped on Interstate 40 near Lonoke on Sept. 18, 2018, by Arkansas State Police Trooper Josh Elmore, who arrested the pair after a search of Caceres' car turned up 18 bundles of methamphetamine, weighing a pound each, hidden in the trunk in both fender wells.
According to a probable-cause affidavit filed Sept. 20, 2018, in federal court, Elmore observed a 2013 Ford Fusion with a Georgia license plate on Interstate 40 following a tractor-trailer rig too closely. He pulled the driver over when the car drifted over the white fog line, the affidavit said.
Caceres, in the passenger seat, told Elmore that Gonzalez, the driver, did not speak English, and she said the two were returning to Georgia from a three-day visit with a friend in Arizona, but was unable to tell him the city they traveled to or the friend's name.
After the methamphetamine was discovered, Caceres told police that the pair had gone to Arizona to visit with Gonzalez's cousin, who was in Mexicali, Mexico, and was trying to cross into the U.S. illegally, the affidavit said. But then she said that the two had traveled to Long Beach, Calif,. where two men picked up the car and left it in a supermarket parking lot four hours later. She said the two were on their way back to Georgia when Elmore pulled them over.
In August 2020, Caceres' case was transferred to the Southern District of Ohio, where she was sentenced to nine years in federal prison on Feb. 2.
On March 30, in federal court in Little Rock, Gonzalez pleaded guilty to one count of aiding and abetting possession of methamphetamine with intent to deliver, for which the statutory sentence ranges from 10 years to life in prison and five years to life on supervised release.
Speaking through an interpreter, Gonzalez told Wilson that he was satisfied with his attorney, Tamera Lee Deaver from the federal public defenders office in Little Rock, and that he did not wish to withdraw his guilty plea.
Noting Gonzalez's total offense level of 27, criminal history score of zero, and criminal history category of 1, Wilson said the sentencing range under U.S. guidelines for the offense ranged from 70 to 87 months in prison and two to five years of supervised release.
Deaver, arguing on behalf of her client, told Wilson that the factors surrounding Gonzalez's offense justified a sentence at the lower end of the guideline range.
"He has no criminal history and he was a minor participant so we feel that a low-end guideline sentence is appropriate in this case," she said. "We do have an additional request that the court not impose a period of supervised release."
"You think I ought to give him 70 months?" Wilson asked.
"We feel that would be appropriate, your honor," Deaver replied.
"What says the prosecution, you object to that?" Wilson asked Assistant U.S. Attorney Cameron McCree.
"No, your honor," McCree said.
"All right," Wilson said, "that's what I'll give him."
In addition to the 70-month sentence, Wilson recommended that Gonzalez participate in substance-abuse treatment while in prison and he also imposed five years of supervision after the prison term.