United States v. Jurado-Lopez

SENTENCING MEMORANDUM

GERTNER, District Judge.

Before boarding a plane bound for Boston, Flor Jurado-Lopez (“Jurado-Lopez”), a 29-year-old Guatemalan woman, was locked in a room and forced to insert heroin pellets inside her, under the threat that, otherwise, the men guarding her would do the inserting against her will. This episode took place against a backdrop of extortion, and the shootings of her parents and her husband in Guatemala.

By inserting twenty-three pellets of heroin into her rectum, Jurado-Lopez gravely endangered herself and a pregnancy (a pregnancy at the time unknown to her).…