Newark Executioner Facing Life Sentence In School Yard Triple Murder: UPDATE: Life Without Parole

Rodolfo Godinez, one of six people on trial for the execution style murder of three Newark college students, is being sentenced today in the 2007 triple murder of Iofemi Hightower and Dashon Harvey, both 20, and Terrance Aeriel, 18. Godinez was found guilty of all charges in May.

Rodolfo Godinez, the first defendant to be convicted in the Newark schoolyard triple killings, faces life in prison when he is sentenced this morning in Superior Court in Newark.

In May, a jury convicted Godinez on all 17 counts against him including murder, felony murder, attempted murder, robbery, conspiracy to commit robbery, and weapons charges for the Aug. 4, 2007, attack behind Mount Vernon School.

Prosecutors said Godinez, 26, and five others confronted the four friends that night armed with a gun and a machete. The jury deliberated for about three hours before reaching a verdict.

The victims, Iofemi Hightower and Dashon Harvey, both 20, and Terrance Aeriel, 18, were set upon, lined up against a wall and fatally shot, execution-style. Terrance's sister, Natasha, was also shot, but survived and testified for the prosecution.

Aeriel, now 22, is expected to give a victim impact statement before Godinez is sentenced, as is Shalga Hightower, Iofemi’s mother; James Harvey, Dashon’s father; and Troy Bradshaw, who is Terrance and Natasha’s father. Other relatives may also speak, according to the prosecutor’s office.

Godinez and his cohorts were likely engaging in an MS-13 gang initiation. Godinez shouldn't even have been in the US since he was an illegal alien. Among the others charged were illegal alien Jose Lachira Carranza who had been facing criminal charges, including the rape of a 5-year old and was out on $150,000 bail at the time of the triple murder.

The five other defendants, Carranza, Melvin Jovel, Alexander Alfaro, Shahid Baskerville, and Gerardo Gomez are to be tried separately, with the first of these trials to begin in September.

UPDATE:
He was sentenced to life without parole.

When Will NYT Run Expose On Illegal Aliens

The New York Times began running a series of articles about crimes committed by US military war veterans, which suggests that members of the US Armed Forces come home to commit crimes. The Times' methodologies are suspect, and ignores the fact that crimes committed by members of the US Armed Services is below that of the general population. In other words, it's agenda "journalism" that seeks to undermine support for the US military.

I wonder whether the Times would do a similar report on criminality of illegal aliens, seeing how they are not only here in the country illegally (a violation of federal law), but engage in a significant number of violent crimes that are shocking and deplorable (recall the Newark triple execution murders committed by MS-13 thugs). One such recent case is reported by Dan Riehl. This particular individual was arrested and deported twice. His crimes? Serial rapes of 25 teenagers. In other words, he was a one-person crime spree.

But sadly, it's not just a one-person spree. How about law enforcement officers murdered or assaulted by illegal aliens. Or the victims of illegal aliens in general, which is just the tip of the iceberg.

How about the fact that the nearly 55,000 illegal aliens incarcerated in 2003 were arrested some 460,000 times and were responsible for some 700,000 criminal offenses (see pages 8 through 10) for the year studied - 2003. Among the caveats of the report - it may not capture all illegal aliens in the system nor does it capture all the arrests. It makes for a most interesting read.

That's just a small sampling of the problem, and yet the Times sees fit to focus elsewhere. It isn't curious, because the Times has regularly sought amnesty for illegal aliens and has refused to consider enforcement of existing laws as a solution to deal with illegal aliens in the country. The editors refuse to recognize the serious disruption caused by illegal aliens on the nation, and the huge burden on the nation as a result of illegal aliens. Further, the problems are exacerbated by the likes of MS-13 and other gangs that are made up of illegal aliens that terrorize inner cities and suburbs alike around the country.

Newark Executions Have MS-13 Written All Over Them

Michelle Malkin does a tremendous roundup of news reports from the New York metro region over the past 24 hours, which details not only the horrors inflicted by the six suspects in the brutal triple slaying, but that the violent signature of MS-13 is written all over these crimes. Expect sexual assault charges to be included in the criminal complaints against the six as noted here:

Sources tell 1010WINS three of the college kids were being held at gunpoint as their attackers went after the fourth. With every breath, the young woman bravely fought off a sexual assault, so much so the assailant gave up and shot her [survivor Natasha Ariel] in the head.

Sources say they moved in on the other woman, pulling a machete, slashing and marking up her face and forehead, sexually assaulting her [Iofemi Hightower].

Defensive wounds on her arms and hands show how valiantly she resisted. In the end, she and her two friends were forced to kneel before a wall, face first, all three executed with bullets to the back of their heads.

Law enforcement sources familiar with gangs say this vicious attack has MS-13 written all over it, similar in its brutality to massacres they’ve committed throughout Latin America. Once convinced this was a robbery gone bad, officials have since conceded several of the suspects have MS-13 affiliations and are now, say sources, giving gang motivations strong consideration.

One of the women attacked and murdered, Iofemi Hightower, nearly had her head cut off by these thugs and used machetes to hack at their victims, and it took morticians three days to prepare the body.

Will Newark finally end its nonsensical sanctuary city policy and enforce the law, including obtaining immigration status of individuals arrested for violent crimes? Will other states and cities do the same?

The New Jersey Attorney General, Anne Milgram will require law enforcement in New Jersey to contact ICE to determine immigration status for those arrested for violent crimes. She notes that law enforcement will not ask victims and witnesses to divulge their immigration status, and that's a fair balance of dealing with the community. You want to be able to obtain tips and witnesses for criminal acts, and the threat of deportation and exposure of possible immigration law violations may keep those witnesses from coming forward and allowing violent criminals to walk free. Even with this move, there are those who are cautious and wonder whether this is going to lead to localities enforcing federal immigration law:

The order drew praise from county and local police departments, although groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey and the Latino Leadership Alliance of New Jersey cautioned that it could lead to abuse by local officers.

"There needs to be more training with regard to this and other related issues to ensure it doesn't go down a path of enforcing federal immigration policy or racial profiling," said Charles "Shai" Goldstein, executive director of the New Jersey Immigration Policy Network.

Milgram said the state will monitor departments periodically to insure compliance and issue an annual report on how often notifications are made. She stressed that officers are prohibited from racial profiling -- treating suspects differently based on their ethnicity.

Sadly, it should not have taken this violent crime to have law enforcement conduct this common sense check of immigration status for those it arrests.

Furthermore, there are problems with ICE and its ability to determine promptly whether someone is here legally or not. As Michelle notes, there remain questions relating to the immigration status of the individuals arrested - in particular Godinez, Jovel, and Carranza. Were they subject to TPS - temporary protected status, which enables lawful residency in the US even if they've been accused of criminal acts? Under TPS, it would take a felony conviction to strip someone of TPS, but no one at ICE appears to know what status any of the three have.

This is one of the most infuriating aspects of this case. We have law enforcement who doesn't check with ICE to determine whether someone is here legally or not, so bail can't be properly determined or detainers placed against illegal aliens pursuant to immigration law, ICE can't quite figure out whether the three men are here lawfully - especially if the men may have been granted amnesty as a result of one of a number of amnesty laws passed since the 1980s, and the media doesn't seem to think that this aspect of the story is worth pursuing despite the problems with immigration law.

Others noting the story include Hot Air.

Meanwhile, those within the Newark community have rallied around the families of the victims.

Gangs and Sanctuary

GOP Presidential candidate Tom Tancredo slammed the whole notion of sanctuary cities and pointed to the Newark triple execution as proof-in-fact.

Federal officials said on Monday that a second man among the suspects in the schoolyard slayings of three young friends was in the United States illegally, and a conservative presidential candidate flew into town to denounce the city’s leaders as complicit in the murders because they had declared Newark a “sanctuary” for immigrants.

“If the suspects are found guilty, Newark and its political leadership share a degree of responsibility,” Representative Tom Tancredo, Republican of Colorado, said on the steps of the gold-domed City Hall, surrounded by a dozen supporters and slightly more protesters who rallied against him. “I encourage the family of the victims to pursue a lawsuit against the city.”

Mr. Tancredo, whose bid for the Republican nomination is based largely on an aggressive stance against illegal immigration, is among the many conservatives nationwide who seized on the killings after it was reported that one of the suspects, Jose Lachira Carranza, 28, was an illegal immigrant from Peru.

Before the killings, Mr. Carranza had been arrested three times on felony charges but had been released on bail, in part because the authorities never checked his immigration status. Doing so would likely have triggered a federal “detainer” that would have kept Mr. Carranza in custody to await deportation proceedings.

On Monday, the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency placed a similar detainer on Melvin Jovel, 18, who on Sunday was the sixth person to be arrested in the case. Immigration officials said Mr. Jovel, who was from Honduras, also was in the country illegally.

A third man, Rodolfo Godinez, 24, a legal resident who immigrated from Nicaragua, and three teenagers also face murder and robbery charges for the shooting deaths of Iofemi Hightower, 20; Dashon Harvey, 20; and Terrance Aeriel, 18, on Aug. 4 behind the Mount Vernon School. Mr. Aeriel’s sister Natasha, 19, was also shot, but survived.

Well, it would appear that Godinez somehow attained legal residency, even though earlier reports indicated that he had been subject to deportation and no one was able to track down his whereabouts despite having been involved in various criminal activities over the years.

The sad fact is that the people who pursued the sanctuary city policy on grounds that they were doing so out of compassion for illegal aliens have only managed to provide fertile ground for illegal aliens to pursue criminal activities, including violent crimes such as the triple execution slaying. Gangs, including MS-13 have exploited sanctuary city policies and have set up shop in many urban areas, including Newark.

It was only yesterday that Mayor Cory Booker (D) acknowledged that there are indeed gang overtones to the triple execution, although they continue to downplay the gang aspect. Today, we learn more about the arrests of Godinez and his half brother, Alexander Alfaro, 16, who was arrested Saturday in Virginia after a FBI informant noted that he was meeting up with MS-13 gang members. Two other members had web pages that touted MS-13 and Newark residents have said that they believed that some of the suspects were indeed gang members.

Meanwhile, other New Jersey localities are struggling to deal with the problem and some are urging their elected officials not to assist the federal government in enforcing immigration laws. One such locality is the town of Bogota:

"Our local police should not have the added duty of helping the federal government enforce the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act," said mayoral candidate Andrew T. Fede, a lawyer. "And we are concerned that some believe that the program could be abused as a profiling tool against Hispanic-Americans."

Lonegan, who is not seeking reelection, is one of the state's most vocal proponents of strict immigration enforcement. He said last month that he was considering applying for the program. He said illegal immigration was not a significant problem in Bogota but that he felt 287G would serve as a deterrent to undocumented people who might otherwise settle in Bogota.

Councilwoman Anne Marie Mitchell, who is running for reelection on the same slate as Fede, was on the list of candidates who released the statement opposing 287G. She could not be reached for comment.

At least one New Jersey mayor, Morristown's Donald Cresitello, has applied to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for admission into 287G. He says he is still awaiting a decision.

The federal program has gained attention nationwide as local officials are making moves to address illegal immigration, citing the failure of national political leaders to reform the flawed immigration system.

UPDATE:
Jovel was in court to plead not guilty to the charges stemming from the triple homicide. However, the interesting part comes from what is now being considered an undetermined immigration status. No one seems to know whether Jovel was a legal resident or not.

Jovel, who is from Honduras, told the judge he does not have a Social Security number or a green card, but his immigration status remains unclear, prosecutors said. A U.S. passport was found among his belongings when he was arrested Sunday night, but officials are still trying to determine whether the passport is valid, Assistant Essex County Prosecutor Thomas A. McTigue said. Federal authorities have placed a detainer on Jovel because his status is uncertain, McTigue said.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials participated in Jovel's arrest, and a spokesman for the agency said it becomes involved "when they suspect a person is in the county illegally."

So, it is quite possible that he had forged documents, which add to his legal troubles but no one is quite sure whether he is here legally? This once again highlights the problems with enforcing immigration laws and the failure to control borders. We simply don't know who has entered the country and whether individuals have overstayed their visas, especially when localities do not inform ICE of arrests. In this case, because it is a high profile situation, ICE was involved and a detainer was placed on Jovel. This is what needed to have been done with Carranza and Godinez when each were arrested previously - so as to determine their immigration status and prevent flight if bond was issued on earlier crimes. Failures to contact ICE meant that the illegal aliens were able to stay on the streets and commit still more crimes.

UPDATE:
Mitt Romney has also blasted the notion of sanctuary cities, in a new ad campaign. I guess he felt this was a way to go after Rudy and score points with the law and order types who have been on the case of those municipalities that have sought to become havens for illegal aliens.

"Immigration laws don't work if they're ignored," the ad's announcer states. "That's the problem with cities like Newark, San Francisco and New York City that adopt sanctuary policies. Sanctuary cities become magnets that encourage illegal immigration and undermine secure borders."

"Legal immigration is great," Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, himself says in the ad. "But illegal immigration, that we've got to end. And amnesty is not the way to do it."

UPDATE:
Michelle Malkin weighs in on the arrest and indeterminate status of Jovel.

Return To Sender

It's good to see that the federal government finally did what needed to be done in deporting Elvira Arellano back to Mexico. She was in the US illegally, and had been claiming sanctuary in a church where she was organizing illegal alien protests. She was arrested upon her emerging from the church. Her deportation took place swiftly and she was sent to Tijuana.

An illegal immigrant who took refuge in a Chicago church for a year to avoid being separated from her U.S.-born son has been deported to Mexico, the church’s pastor said.

Elvira Arellano became an activist and a national symbol for illegal immigrant parents as she defied her deportation order and spoke out from her religious sanctuary. She held a news conference last week to announce that she would finally leave the church to try to lobby U.S. lawmakers for change.

She had just spoken at rally Los Angeles rally when she was arrested Sunday outside Our Lady Queen of Angels church and deported, said the Rev. Walter Coleman, pastor of Adalberto United Methodist Church in Chicago, where Arellano had been living.

“She has been deported. She is free and in Tijuana,” said Coleman, who said he spoke to her on the phone. “She is in good spirits. She is ready to continue the struggle against the separation of families from the other side of the border.”

It is a travesty that it took this long for Arellano to be deported. The immigration courts had signed off on her deportation in 1997. Don Surber says good riddance. Too bad it took so long for immigration officials to finally do what they were sworn to do - uphold the law.

There's good reason to question the timing of this high profile deportation. What's also important to note is that immigration system can work quite efficiently when it wants to and many illegal aliens have absolutely no intention of assimilating into US culture, but rather want to continue with their own cultures, without regard for US culture, norms, or law.

Meanwhile, the final thug implicated in the heinous Newark execution slaying of three college students was arrested without incident. The survivor of the incident has fingered Melvin Jovell as the shooter who murdered her three friends. New Jersey law enforcement is still trying to sort out the excuses and reasons for why Godinez or Carranza were allowed to roam on the streets, including the overburdened criminal justice system and corrections system, especially when both were illegal aliens.

There are some NJ legislators who want to end the wall between the criminal justice system, law enforcement, and federal immigration authorities - so that if an illegal alien is arrested on other crimes, that status will be passed along to immigration officials. That it would take a legislator to write to the State Attorney General directing that they do such a thing shows the blind eye to which the state had turned on this serious issue.

Indeed, there are continuing signs that the thugs who executed Terrance Aeriel, Dashon Harvey and Iofemi Hightower are members of MS-13, although Newark police continue to discount that aspect of the case:

According to the Star-Ledger of New Jersey, Newark police pieced the case together with the help of MySpace, the social networking Web site, where the 16-year-old suspect had a page. Information on his page revealed that he had left New Jersey and listed friends in Virginia.

Although the page has been removed, The Washington Post has a saved version of it, showing the young man in sunglasses and a bandanna making a gang sign. On the page, he claimed to be a member of Guanacos Little Cycos Salvatruchos, part of the Latino gang MS-13 with ties to Northern Virginia. He noted his occupation as "smoke Piff" and his income as "$250,000 and higher." The page showed that the "last login" was Aug. 5, the day after the killings.

A man who was at the Oxon Hill apartment at the time of Godinez's arrest said Godinez had talked about being a member of MS-13. Newark police and other authorities say, however, that they have found no gang link to the killings.

Perhaps the Newark police are withholding that information so as to develop further leads or saving information for trial, but I wonder why the police would discount the ties to MS-13. Are they turning a blind eye to the problem, even as it stares them in the face?

UPDATE:
Godinez is fighting his extradition from Maryland to New Jersey. Also, this report claims that Godinez is a legal resident.

The 24-year-old Nicaraguan national nabbed early Saturday in suburban Washington D.C. and charged in the Aug. 4 Newark schoolyard shootings is fighting extradition, officials said this morning.

Rodolfo Godinez is being held in Prince George's County, Md. Had he waived his extradition hearing, he could have been returned to New Jersey this week. Instead, he will remain in the Maryland jail until the Sept. 20 hearing.

Ramon Korionoff, a spokesman for Maryland State's Attorney Glenn Ivey, said the only argument Godinez, who is a legal resident, will be allowed to make during his extradition hearing is that he is not who the authorities say he is. If he can't make that case, Korionoff said, he will be returned to New Jersey.

Godinez was supposed to be deported in 1993 but no one ever bothered to follow up despite his numerous criminal justice entanglements, and no one apparently knew whether he was deported or not. Now, he's considered a legal resident? Can someone please clarify and straighten this out for me? When did he enter the country legally, and who determined this?

More on today's legal moves can be found at the WaPo.

UPDATE:
After days of saying that there weren't any links to gangs and discounting gang overtones with respect to the execution slayings, Mayor Booker has admitted that there are indeed gang overtones to the murders.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker acknowledged today there were "gang overtones" to the execution-style killings of three college students in a Newark school playground Aug. 4 but said police have no evidence to indicate the shootings were a gang attack.

"It is obvious that, as information continues to come forward, that we're seeing some gang overtones that are involved with this," Booker said at press conference a day after police arrested the sixth and final suspect. "Though we do not know with any specificity if this was a gang-related event whatsoever."

Police Director Garry McCarthy said the shootings have prompted his department to step up its intelligence on MS-13, a Hispanic gang with which some of the suspects identified.

It's better late than never, and Newark would be well served to get a crash course on dealing with these violent thugs. Dealing with them both via law enforcement and via immigration enforcement would be a good idea, though I doubt that Newark will change its sanctuary city status anytime soon, despite the links between violent crimes and illegal aliens in and around Newark and neighboring towns and cities.

MS-13 Fingerprints All Over Newark Executions

As police continue to hunt for more suspects in the Newark schoolyard slayings that left three college students dead, investigators struggle with one of the case's most provocative mysteries: rumored links to a notorious street gang called MS-13.

The gang, rooted in the 1980s Salvadoran civil war and dominated by Latino immigrants, is considered one of the country's most violent criminal groups. Although MS-13 doesn't have large numbers in Newark, residents of the Ivy Hill neighborhood where the killings took place say they've seen more young men enticed by the gang. That included five of the suspects in the Aug. 4 execution-style shootings.

Neighbors of three juvenile suspects say the boys claimed to be members of MS-13. At least two of them maintained MySpace pages that praised the gang. The adult suspects, Jose Carranza and Rodolfo Godinez, were active members, residents say.

Because of those reputed connections, investigators are exploring whether they played a role in the Aug. 4 attack, in which three college students died and a fourth survived a gunshot to the face.

In Essex County, where most gang violence comes at the hands of Crips, Bloods and Latin Kings, MS-13 -- also known as Mara Salvatrucha -- hasn't been much of a menace, authorities said.

MS-13 started in Los Angeles in the 1970s to protect Salvadoran immigrants from being preyed upon by other gangs, according to law enforcement experts. Los Angeles remains its base, along with strongholds in the Washington D.C. area.

As I've previously suggested, the triple murders may have been an initiation rite into the gang, whose violent history elsewhere in the US has been well documented, especially by Michelle Malkin.

This NYT report on the background of the suspects also suggests it was an initiation rite - that only one gun was used, and it was apparently passed between the thugs who fired on the helpless college students.

To date, the Newark authorities have offered no public portrait of the group they believe was responsible for the killings of Dashon Harvey, 20; Iofemi Hightower, 20; and Terrance Aeriel, 18. Their official statements have barely expanded beyond the simple, awful charges against the three already in custody: murder and robbery.

But one senior law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is at a critical stage, said that only one gun, a revolver, was used and that it was fired first by Mr. Carranza as he allegedly shot the only survivor, Natasha Aeriel, 19. One of the three suspects arrested so far, the official said, has told detectives that an 18-year-old who is still at large also fired the weapon.

Tom Moran thinks that the catch and release problem in Essex County (where Newark is situated) is a rich/poor thing. I disagree. It's a lack of prisons problem. If you don't have sufficient prison space for those who commit crimes, you end up with having to make deals that put public safety in jeopardy.

If Mayor Cory Booker (I) is truly serious about putting his foot down on crime in Newark, he better call for more prisons to handle those who have been convicted of crimes, along with detention facilities for those who are awaiting deportation hearings. Detection equipment may help the police arrive at a scene quicker, but unless you have space to hold those thugs, the streets aren't going to be made safer on a permanent basis.

The idea that illegal aliens were involved in this crime has sparked newfound interest in border control and enforcement of existing immigration law, but some folks are confused over the concept. There are still questions over what the Essex County prosecutors should have done to alert federal authorities on the immigration status of those entering the criminal justice system as suspects.

UPDATE:
Law enforcement is busy hunting down three men in connection with the triple execution. They're looking for Rodolfo Godinez, his brother, and another male teenager. The search extends as far South as Virginia.

Meanwhile, over in Paterson, New Jersey, another illegal alien was arrested in connection with the murder of a 23-year old pregnant woman. This guy doesn't have any gang connections as far as can be determined, but he apparently was out on bail when he committed the murder:

Police announced Wednesday that they arrested a 20-year-old Paterson resident in the shooting death last month of a pregnant woman outside Riverview Towers on Presidential Boulevard.

Julio Graciano, 20, of 375 15th Ave., was arrested Saturday by Paterson police and charged with murder in the death of Elisha Wordelman, a 23-year-old woman from Westwood who was shot while standing outside the apartment complex early July 28.

Police arrested Graciano about 5 a.m. Saturday morning after finding him sleeping at home, said Detective Lt. Anthony Traina, a Paterson police spokesman. He did not resist arrest.

Traina said they waited to announce the arrest until Wordelman's family had been notified, and to give police time to interview corroborating witnesses.

Graciano, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, is being held at the Passaic County jail on a $1 million bail with no 10 percent option, Traina said. He will make his first court appearance on Friday.

At the time of the shooting, Graciano was free on bail from an arrest in 2006 in which he was indicted on charges of aggravated assault and weapons possession.

Once again, we have a confluence of immigration law and criminal law where law enforcement and the prosecutors dropped the ball.

Those who say that illegal aliens aren't a problem certainly haven't been paying attention to what is happening around the country.

The Spark

The New York Times reports with some wonderment over the reaction of Newark residents to the heinous and brutal execution murders of three college students. Two of those involved are illegal aliens who have lengthy criminal records, and yet were not only free to commit more crimes in the US, but should have been deported long ago.

Political rivals have promised to work together, young men in gang attire have signed pledges to put down their weapons, and a mayor who was facing criticism from even his most devoted allies has been buoyed by a wave of sympathy and support.

...

Iofemi Hightower, 20; Dashon Harvey, 20; and Terrance Aeriel, 18; were killed with shots to the back of the head. Mr. Aeriel’s 19-year-old sister, Natasha, was shot but survived.

If disaster can be seen to have even a hint of silver lining, the homicides, which have drawn news coverage across the nation, have provoked a level of outrage, and commitment to change, not seen here since the riots of 40 years ago.

The money and the cameras are not what will get the crime rates down in Newark, a community that will no longer tolerate such criminal acts and gangs operating in their backyards will.

MS-13 is one of the most violent gangs operating in our nation's urban areas, and the two alleged ringleaders had MS-13 ties. Was this an initiation rite of passage into the gang for the underage individuals arrested in connection with this crime? It certainly seems possible.

For far too long, the community looked the other way, perhaps feeling helpless about the situation and with a police force that was overburdened and not particularly focused - far too many were pushing paper and not enough on the streets.

Sadly, the Times fails to mention that illegal aliens were involved in the crimes: Jose Lachira Carranza, 28, who was out on $150,000 bail despite pending indictments on a charge of raping a 5-year-old (and is a self-admitted illegal alien), and one of aggravated assault in a bar fight; and Rodolfo Godinez, 24, convicted of theft in 2003 and should have been deported a decade earlier as he too is an illegal alien. Godinez is still at large. Police stopped looking for him when they called his last known address and a woman reported that Godinez had left the country. Apparently not. The sheriff acknowledges that they should probably have done more, but claim that they don't even have a place to put all the prisoners who are at large:

"We gave it four shots. We should have kept looking for him," but his department was undermanned and overwhelmed, Fontoura said. Essex County currently has 16,000 people with open warrants, and he has eight to 20 officers to track them at any given time, he said.

"If we arrested them all, where would we put them?" he said.

"They would all be (released on their own recognizance)," Fontoura said. "If we want to get serious about crime, we're going to have address that."

By addressing that problem, that means new prisons. And given that many of those who are roaming free are commiting more than one crime, incarceration would have a multiplier effect on reducing crime rates in the region.

Meanwhile, the hunt for Godinez has spread to include Virginia.

The State Attorney General is looking into why Carranza was allowed to remain out on bail despite the seriousness of the charges pending, and in light of the second incident. Indeed, it appears that the judge in the case reduced the amount of bail requested in the rape case by half:

Carranza was released from the Essex County jail on May 22 after posting $150,000 bail.

Earlier yesterday, state Senate President Richard Codey sharply criticized Vena's decision to lower the bail from $300,000 and said he asked state Attorney General Anne Milgram to investigate what happened.

"It is our understanding that Jose Carranza's bail was reduced from $300,000 to $150,000 as a unilateral decision by the judge, without allowing any input from the prosecutor's office, which is simply unacceptable," Codey said in a statement.

The judge apparently consolidated and reduced the bail and did not have either prosecutors or defense lawyers present when he signed the order.

Prosecutors also note that they generally don't look into the immigration status until after sentencing - to ensure that such individuals are incarcertated for their crimes.

This process should be reexamined. Knowing the immigration status of the defendant should be used as an element in determining whether the individual poses a flight risk and bail denied. If they have accused of committing crimes, and bail is an appropriate option to incarceration prior to trial for such crimes, bail should not be an option if that individual poses a flight risk. Indeed, some in Newark are proposing just that:

Newark City Councilman Ronald C. Rice announced yesterday that he would sponsor a resolution urging Newark police to call immigration authorities upon arresting undocumented aliens on felony charges.

"This helps law enforcement to go after bad people in our community," Rice said. "There was a space, a gap in law enforcement efforts to catch someone accused of committing a crime."

Get This Evil Out Of My City

Newark Mayor Cory Booker uttered those words yesterday in the course of attending three funerals for the murdered trio of college students.

“Get this evil out of my city,” Mayor Cory A. Booker told nearly 1,000 mourners at the funeral for the youngest of the three victims, Terrance Aeriel, 18.

Mr. Booker stood at a lectern inside New Hope Baptist Church, waving his arms and not so much speaking as preaching, his words a mix of anger, praise and a personal appeal for forgiveness.

In the days before the killings, Mr. Booker had been criticized by many who said he was disconnected from residents of his adopted city, and a video had surfaced in which Mr. Booker described a colorful Newark activist using words that, while intended as affectionate, angered the activist’s family and even the mayor’s supporters.

“I want to repent to this church,” Mr. Booker said at Mr. Aeriel’s funeral. “In the days leading into Saturday, I was saying things that hurt this city. But I broke down. I was broken down, but in the pit of my despair I heard the Lord speak.”

As the crowd rose and cheered, he added: “How dare I or any other Newarker crumble to the ground? How dare we give in to fear? How dare people turn on their brothers and attack them, blame them?”

Mr. Booker, like many other mourners, including Gov. Jon S. Corzine and United States Senator Robert Menendez, attended all three funerals.

Standing near the silver coffin of Mr. Aeriel, who was ordained as a minister a few years ago and was known to relatives as T. J., Mr. Corzine said: “T. J.’s life has not been in vain. He has inspired so many of you, and he inspires me.”

About 11:30 p.m. last Saturday the three victims — Dashon Harvey, 20; Iofemi Hightower, 20; and Mr. Aeriel — were hanging out at the Mount Vernon School in the Ivy Hill neighborhood. With them was Natasha Aeriel, 19, Mr. Aeriel’s sister.

Somewhere in all the discussion over why this crime happened must be someone to stand up and demand action taken against illegal aliens, one of whom was involved in this heinous act. Not only was Jose Lachira Carranza an illegal alien, but he had already been indicted on two other crimes - a rape of a 5-year old over a period of weeks and on which he was released on $150,000 bail, and a barroom brawl.

There are two minors involved and in custody, two other minors are being sought, and another illegal alien is being sought. The press is calling this guy a Peruvian national, but he is an illegal alien. It was a crime just for him to be in the country. Then, there's another guy who probably shouldn't have been in the country either and appears involved as well:

Rodolfo Godinez: An arrest warrant was issued yesterday for the 24-year-old Nicaraguan national, whom authorities are calling a "principal player" in the crime. He is expected to be charged with three counts of murder and felony murder, plus weapons charges.

Godinez, also known as Rodolfo Gomez, lives on Midland Avenue in Newark, but at one time lived in the Ivy Hill Park Apartments.

According to neighbors in Newark's Ivy Hill section, Godinez was often seen with Carranza, the two juveniles now in custody and a juvenile who was at large yesterday. Authorities said Godinez has been arrested several times on robbery and weapons-possession charges since he was 19.

Is he an illegal alien too? From the way the article is written, dollars to donuts I'd say that he is. It is a crime just for him to be in the country, and that he's alleged to be involved in this murder only should bring even more attention to the problem of lax border control enforcement.

If Booker truly wants to get crime under control, demanding that the federal government assist in cracking down on the illegal aliens in his city would be a good place to start. Demanding that cities cease attempting to circumvent federal immigration law and calling for sanctuary cities is another step.

These illegal aliens have no business being in the US. If they want to enter the US and make a better life for themselves, they can do so legally as millions of other legal residents and naturalized citizens have done before.

What is especially galling is that Carranza had already been in police custody twice and was not held on the immigration charges. Had they done so, this criminal act could have been avoided. The failure to enforce the immigration law has real repercussions.

Just ask the families of Dashon Harvey, Iofemi Hightower, and Terrance Aeriel.

UPDATE:
Gothamist has a posting chock full of interesting tidbits about those standing accused of the triple murder. Godinez wasn't supposed to be in the country (aka being an illegal alien), but was apparently deported in 1993 and no one knows whether that came to pass. Apparently, Godinez and the other thugs apparently had links to the violent gang MS-13.

Carranza ran with another tough character in Rodolfo Godinez, 24, who had amassed arrests for robbery and weapons possession. Yesterday, police issued a warrant for Godinez's arrest in the schoolyard killings. He remained at large last night.

Like Carranza, Godinez was a former resident. He lived nearby, in an apartment on Midland Avenue. And like Carranza, Godinez was believed to be associated with MS-13, considered one of the most violent gangs in America.

Rooted in the Salvadoran civil war of the 1980s, MS-13, also known as La Mara Salvatrucha, spread to the United States with immigration. Though smaller than other national gangs such as the Bloods and Crips, it is known to have a strong presence in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

Michelle Malkin has written extensively on that subject.

UPDATE:
Patterico has a guest poster who discusses the nexus between immigration law and criminal justice - the immigration courts.

Sorry to burst the bubble of those of you who had a hard time believing that an alient without the right to remain in the US actually is allowed to remain in the US until such time as an Immigration Judge decides they are not allowed to remain in the US, and then for some added time after that.

What you should understand, however, is that Immigration Courts are operated by the Executive Branch, not the Judicial Branch. Immigration Judges are appointed by the Dept. of Justice, and ICE staffs the “prosecutors” offices of the Immigration Courts. The Immigration Judge is actually exercising the discretion conferred upon the Attorney General by Congress with respect to detaining aliens pending deportation hearings, or to release them on bail.

The issue before Immigration Courts is simply whether the person before the court has a right to remain in the US. That is NOT a criminal charge, and they are not held as suspected “criminals” pending trial.

Here’s an article that is a little outdated, but sets for some interesting numbers from around 2000 time frame on this question.

For instance — in FY 2000, immigration courts conducted approximately 216,000 deportation hearings.

Approximately 144,000 of the individuals subject to those hearings were on bail at the time.

Of those released on bail, approximately 44,000 failed to appear at their hearing, and were ordered deported in absentia.

ICE estimated that at any given time, approximately 315,000 people remain in the US who are subject to an order of removal issued by an immigration court.

44,000 of 144,000 failed to show. That works out to 30%. If you're playing Russian Roulette you have better odds - of not being shot.