Merced Sun-Star
The two U.S. Penitentiary Atwater inmates suspected of stabbing and killing correctional officer Jose Rivera will face first-degree murder charges, federal prosecutors announced Thursday.
The charges come nearly two months after Rivera, a 22-year-old Navy veteran, was attacked by inmates wielding handmade weapons inside a housing unit at USP Atwater, a high-security federal prison just outside Merced.
Inmates James Leon Guerrero, 43, and Jose Cabrera Sablan, 40, both from Guam, will each face charges of first-degree murder, first-degree murder of a federal correctional officer and murder by a federal prisoner serving a life sentence, U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott said Thursday afternoon during a press conference in Fresno.
Though both inmates are already serving life sentences for earlier crimes, the new charges could carry death sentences, Scott said.
The U.S. Attorney General will make the final decision over whether prosecutors should seek the death penalty, but Scott said he believes they will. “My estimation is that this is a death penalty case,” he said. “This is why we have the death penalty — for cases like this.”
Article continues below video
The indictment, handed down by a federal grand jury, was filed in court Thursday morning.
Scott said an FBI investigation into Rivera’s death revealed that Sablan was the one who actually stabbed Rivera. He used an “eight-inch, ice pick-type shank,” Scott said.
Rivera attempted to escape the attack, Scott said, but was run down by Guerrero. Guerrero then held Rivera while Sablan repeatedly stabbed him, Scott said.
He said evidence collected by the FBI includes the murder weapon, video surveillance of the attack and eyewitness accounts from correctional officers who responded.
Authorities said it remains uncertain who will handle Sablan and Guerrero’s defense. The pair will make their first court appearance in Fresno in the next few weeks. Two Fresno-based federal attorneys, Dawrence Rice and Elana Landau, will prosecute the case.
Guerrero and Sablan are being held in separate federal prison, Guerrero in a facility near Seattle and Sablan in Dublin in Alameda County.
Rivera, who lived in Chowchilla, died June 20. He had worked at USP Atwater less than a year.
The third of five children, he graduated from Le Grand High School in 2003 and enlisted in the U.S. Navy shortly after. He served four years in the military, including two tours in Iraq.
Rivera’s family was told of the indictment Wednesday, Scott said. He described their reaction as “satisfied.”
Both Guerrero and Sablan came from Guam, a U.S. territory, and both were transferred off the small Pacific island sometime in the 1990s because of their violent behavior inside a prison there, according to corrections officials in Guam.
The pair are longtime friends, Guam officials said.
One of them, Guerrero, has been accused of killing a correctional officer before, though he wasn’t convicted. He was transferred to USP Atwater from another federal prison the day before Rivera was killed. He was sentenced to life in prison in 1998 for armed bank robbery.
Sablan had been at USP Atwater since July 2005. He was convicted of murder and attempted murder in Guam in 1990.
The director of the Guam Department of Corrections, Jose Palacios, has suggested that Guerrero and Sablan may have decided to kill Rivera in the hopes they’d be transferred together from Atwater to the Florence Federal Correctional Complex in Colorado.
Florence, which houses convicted terrorists Zacarias Moussaoui and Ted Kaczynski, is the federal prison system’s most secure facility. It is generally considered the last stop for federal inmates who misbehave in prison.
At least two of Sablan’s relatives are housed there: his brother Rudy Sablan and his cousin William Sablan.
In the wake of Rivera’s death, local community leaders and national union officials have called for a variety of safety reforms at the prison — reforms that correctional officers say could have prevented Rivera’s death.
The U.S. Bureau of Prisons, which oversees all federal prisons, has agreed to meet some of those demands, including adding more correctional officers to high-security housing units and making stab-resistant vests widely available to employees. So far the bureau has rejected requests to allow federal correctional officers to carry non-lethal weapons such as batons and Tasers.
Union officials have criticized the bureau’s response to Rivera’s death as far too slow. Though a bureau representative was present for Thursday’s announcement, she declined to answer questions about progress toward implementing safety-related reforms.
In a written statement, the director of the Bureau of Prisons, Harley Lappin, thanked the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI for their efforts to investigate Rivera’s death and bring charges against the inmates responsible. “This is an important first step in what we hope will be a relatively short process of bringing some closure to this tragic event,” the statement said.
USP Atwater’s warden, Dennis Smith, has declined to make any public statements about Rivera’s stabbing.
A community group that formed after Rivera’s death to demand safety improvements at USP Atwater, called Friends and Family of Correctional Officers, released the following statement Thursday: “We are hopeful for the Rivera family that justice prevails. Sadly, we believe that stab-resistant vests could (have) prevented this murderous assault in the first place.”
USP Atwater, which houses roughly 1,100 high-security inmates, is still on lockdown as a result of Rivera’s stabbing.
Correctional officers at the prison, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said prison officials have told them that the lockdown will end in phases beginning next week.
The Sun-Star published a story last month detailing what several USP Atwater correctional officers said are failed safety policies at the prison. Besides low staffing and a lack of protective equipment, the officers said USP Atwater doesn’t adequately search inmates for weapons or punish inmates who act out violently.
They said assaults on officers and fights among inmates have increased dramatically in the past two years or so.
In line with standard procedures, Rivera was alone with more than 100 inmates when he was attacked, wearing no protective equipment and carrying no weapons.
