Man will serve year in jail for providing gun
Judge had originally ordered prison time
Agustin Cruz-Silva, 45, will spend the next 365 days in jail with credit for more than 200 days served, then be deported to Mexico.
Cruz-Silva pleaded no contest in March to providing a pistol to Sergio Ramos-Trujillo, 27, who allegedly killed his co-worker, Jorge Corona-Mora, in September at the LDS dairy farm in Elberta.
With the no-contest plea — as well as guilty pleas to obstruction of justice and possession of a firearm by a restricted person, both third-degree felonies — prosecutors agreed Cruz-Silva would avoid prison time.
However, at sentencing on April 24, Davis departed from the plea deal recommendation and imposed an indeterminate time in the state prison, a decision met with immediate frustration, evidenced by a motion filed soon after by defense attorney Paige Benjamin.
In the motion, Benjamin stated, "the court explicitly stated that it would follow that recommendation unless the defendant was found to have been on probation or parole during the alleged incident, or if the defendant was found to be a convicted murderer. The court further stated that if it deviated from the recommendation that deviation may be considered a basis for the defendant to withdraw his guilty plea."
"The reason the court departed from that recommendation was, frankly, the court still does not have a clue who this man is," Davis said Tuesday. "He's either Agustin Carmen-Cruz, Carmelo Cruz-Silva, Mario Padilla-Rodriguez, Carmen Silva, Jose Carmen-Silva, Jose Silva . . . or one of the any other long list of aliases he has used."
The man told the court the name on his birth certificate is Jose de Carmen Cruz-Silva.
The jury trial began Tuesday for Ramos-Trujillo and, as part of the plea deal, Cruz-Silva testified for the prosecution Tuesday morning.
E-mail: sisraelsen@desnews.com
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