Trump's pardon of Honduran ex-president cited as reason for leniency at sentencing of ex-congressman

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NEW YORK (AP) — A defense lawyer cited President Donald Trump’s recent pardon of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández on Thursday as she asked a judge who once presided over a civil sex abuse case against Trump to treat a former Honduran congressman leniently for his drug conspiracy conviction.

Attorney Kristen Santillo said the Hernandez pardon made it unfair to force her 65-year-old client, Midence Oqueli Martinez Turcios, to spend essentially the rest of his life behind bars while others who “are the most powerful, who have the most money ... are going to go home.”

Judge Lewis A. Kaplan sentenced Martinez, a former Honduran congressman, to 21 years and 10 months in prison. While he acknowledged that sentencing disparities are a factor judges must consider, he also made it clear that Martinez being sentenced primarily for his crimes.

“It's my job to apply the law,” the judge said. “I do my job.”

He noted that the authority to issue pardons was established at the Constitutional Convention from 1787 to 1789 and left Trump with pardon powers “entrusted to him which have no legal restraint to which I am aware.”

“That's all I'm going to say about that,” the judge added.

Last year Kaplan presided over a second phase of a civil trial resulting from columnist E. Jean Carroll's claims that Trump sexually abused her in the dressing room of a midtown Manhattan department store in spring 1996. A jury awarded her $83.3 million in damages.

That award came less than a year after a separate jury awarded Carroll $5 million in damages after concluding that he sexually abused her and then defamed her after she revealed the attack in a 2019 memoir.

Trump did not attend the first trial but testified during the second, which focused only on what damages he would owe. Kaplan severely limited what Trump could be asked, and his testimony lasted less than three minutes. At one point Kaplan threatened to expel Trump from the courtroom after Carroll's lawyers complained that he could be heard making remarks to his lawyers such as “it is a witch hunt” and “it really is a con job.”

Martinez did not speak at Thursday's sentencing. He was indicted in Manhattan federal court in July 2018, arrested by Honduran authorities in December 2022 and brought to the U.S. the following March. In August 2024 he pleaded guilty to conspiring to import 5 kilograms or more of cocaine from 2004 to 2014.

Prosecutors had sought a 30-year prison sentence, saying Martinez "worked directly with one of the most notorious and powerful drug trafficking organizations in Honduras for a decade.

In court papers prior to the sentencing, the government was dismissive of Santillo's argument for leniency on grounds that other convicted Honduran officials were treated better.

“Here, of course, the defendant was a former military officer and congressman who not only directly participated in a massive drug trafficking operation but was also responsible for the murders of multiple people, some of whom were kidnapped and tortured, including by the defendant himself, prior to their death,” prosecutors wrote.

In her written arguments prior to sentencing, Santillo sought a penalty of a dozen years, citing the contrast between her client and others prosecuted in the case who “lived in luxury and accumulated substantial assets from their drug trafficking activity.”

Martinez, she said, “lived modestly, worked hard in the fields, even when he was a Congressman, and he has minimal assets.”

She also cited the potential disparity with leniency for others “who served in much higher positions of power than Mr. Martinez in Honduras, who played more critical roles in drug-trafficking, and who were found to have participated in comparable if not greater acts of violence in Honduras.”