Latino Stereotype in Alabama Drug Trial

Here’s one for the water cooler and beyond (do people still hang out at the office water cooler to chat?)

A Latina in Alabama was found guilty of possessing with intent to distribute methamphetamine. The woman, 27 year old Araceli Almanzar, was traveling in a truck driven by her brother when they were stopped by the cops because the vehicle didn’t have a licence plate. The brother was undocumented; she stutter-stepped her declarations and the police searched the truck and found the drugs. Almanzar claimed she knew nothing of the meth and that the truck was borrowed.

The jury finds her guilty but then, according to Benchmarks,

…a miracle happened. In an act approaching divine intervention, the trial judge — U.S. District Judge Karon Owen Bowdre — decided that the jury’s guilty verdict reflected a “miscarriage of justice” and granted Almanzar’s motion for acquittal.

Judge Bowdre said that

“life is different for a Hispanic woman in a male dominated culture, … the cultural expectations are different and that Hispanic women frequently, basically, do what their male family members ask them to do without asking lots of questions.”

This made Almamnzar an innocent bystander. Of course, the prosecutors appealed and the case went before the 11th circuit  where the appeal was upheld.

The (11th Circuit) court explained that Bowdre “assumed that Almanzar’s brother ‘[made] all the arrangements’ and had ‘invited’ Almanzar to accompany him as a ‘mere passenger,’ but the evidence established that Almanzar to a large degree was in control of the return trip. Almanzar was in possession of the phony bill of sale and the majority of the money, and she dominated the conversation with [police].”

The court concluded that the trial judge based her assumptions “on a stereotype that a Hispanic woman would trust blindly her male sibling, but that information was never presented to the jury.”

There is one obvious thing about all of this that wasn’t clarified. If the arrest happened in Alabama it would be assumed that the arresting officers didn’t speak Spanish – a stereotype in itself, I know, but what are the odds? And if the driver/brother was undocumented is could also be assumed that his sister was more fluent in English and therefore “to a large degree was in control of the return trip” and the interrogation exchanges with the police.

I’m not saying that Almanzar is innocent, just that there were questions left unanswered. From what we can deduce, she’s serving time in jail.

Follow Victor Landa on Twitter @vlanda.