SAN DIEGO – Federal prosecutors want a Mexican man sentenced to life in prison for striking and killing a Border Patrol agent with a drug-laden Hummer as the officer laid spike strips in an attempt to puncture the vehicle’s tires.
Jesus Navarro didn’t intend to kill the agent, only avoid the spikes, says his attorney, who recommends that a judge deliver a 40-year prison sentence Friday.
A jury deliberated only two hours in April before convicting Navarro of second-degree murder and conspiracy to distribute marijuana in the death of Agent Luis Aguilar at a campground in California’s Imperial Sand Dunes near the Arizona border in January 2008.
Navarro, 25, was extradited to the United States last year.
Shortly after Aguilar died, Navarro was arrested in Mexico and signed a detailed confession – after authorities beat and threatened him, he later said – that acknowledged a split-second choice to hit the 32-year-old Border Patrol agent instead of the spikes. He was held in Mexican prison until a judge cleared him of unrelated migrant smuggling charges and released him five months later.