The couple seemed unusually nervous to the undercover policeman assigned to O`Hare International Airport. As they walked through the airport hotel lobby, the policeman followed them with his eyes.
They appeared awfully protective of their two blue suitcases. When they got to the checkout desk, the woman opened her purse to pay. Inside, but clearly visible, were three wads of U.S. currency so thick they had to be bound with rubber bands.
The man was heard to order a cab to take them to Union Station. When it arrived, the policeman made a call.
At mile marker 334 heading south on Int. Hwy. 57, 40 miles from O`Hare, the couple`s cab was pulled over by two narcotics agents. The couple were not going to Union Station.
”I`m just taking these good people to St. Louis,” the cabbie said.
Inside the woman`s purse, the police found $23,670 in cash. Inside the two blue suitcases, police found 6.6 pounds of 90 percent pure cocaine–worth $1,831,940 when diluted and sold on the streets of an American city, prosecutors said later.
Javier Arbelaez Jimenez, 44, and Marina Posada Velez, 37, both citizens of Colombia who gave addresses in Miami, were arrested and charged with possession of a controlled substance.
The arrest was considered big because of the large amount of cocaine confiscated. The two were going to be shepherded through the initial stages of the Cook County Criminal Court system by the state`s attorney`s office so they would not get lost in paper work or slip through the cracks and disappear before their trial.
On New Year`s Eve in Bond Court, the couple made their first court appearance. They wore the same clothes they had on when they were arrested:
expensive apres-ski outfits. They said nothing when they appeared before a judge. Their lawyer was an assistant public defender. The assistant state`s attorney said they were high-risk defendants from another country with no ties to the community and should be held without bond. The judge agreed.
The next day in Holiday Court, their bond was set at $2 million cash. They remained in custody. It was then discovered that Arbelaez also was in the United States illegally. His visitor`s visa had expired more than a month before. His passport, he told police, was in Miami. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service was interested in holding him.
On Jan. 10, the two appeared in Narcotics Court. By this time, they had hired a private attorney who had requested a reduction in the bond. The case was before Judge Thaddeus Kowalski.
Their Chicago lawyer, Ken del Valle, said that Posada was a widow, that she has no prior convictions and that she has a relative in Downstate Carbondale. He put a former policeman on the stand who said the current value of the cocaine seized was not $1,831,940 but $504,000.
The lawyer said Arbelaez was a lawyer in Colombia and had worked for five years at Armo Co. in Miami as general manager. He said Arbelaez was the sole supporter of his family and has a cousin in Waukegan. And, he said, if
”granted reasonable bail, he will appear and is willing to abide by any conditions that the court sets, including daily reporting, telephone reporting, whatever you want.”
The assistant state`s attorney said that neither of the two Colombians had any ties to the community and no reason to remain for trial if they made bond. The $2 million bond should stay.
”This man has absolutely no reason not to stay here and face the charges against him,” del Valle said.
”Okay,” said Kowalski, who set bond at $550,000 and ordered that 10 percent of the amount be paid in cash.
”Which he will not make,” del Valle said.
But four days later, on Jan. 15, Arbelaez did make bond. His attorney brought in a cashier`s check for $55,000. Arbelaez then was transferred to the custody of immigration officials, and his immigration bond was set at $100,000.
Posada remained in jail.
The state`s attorney`s office immediately filed an emergency appeal to the Illinois Appellate Court asking that the bond for Arbelaez be raised before the defendant could get his immigration bond lowered and disappear.
On Jan. 21, Immigration Judge Robert Vinikoor lowered Arbelaez`s bond to $20,000 cash from $100,000 cash with the provision that Arbelaez report every day at 9 a.m. Arbelaez promised that he would.
The next day, Arbelaez`s attorney appeared with a cashier`s check for $20,000, and Arbelaez was set free. The following morning at 9 o`clock, Arbelaez failed to live up to his promise.
On Jan. 23, he did not check in with immigration officials at 9 a.m., and he did not appear at his preliminary hearing in Criminal Court. Kowalski, who earlier had lowered the bond from $2 million cash, issued a fugitive warrant and raised the bond to where it had been before.
Three days later, the Appellate Court ruled that Arbelaez`s bond could be raised. But it was too late. He had disappeared.
”Javier Arbelaez was allowed to buy his way out of our justice system,” said Jim Piper, an assistant state`s attorney. ”Good police work was turned into a sham. The guy put up $75,000 in cash and forfeited it when he took off, but everyone knows money like that is no problem for drug dealers. The fox got out of the cage right before our eyes.”
”I have no excuses for what happened,” Kowalski said about his decision to lower the bond. ”This has certainly focused attention on this kind of problem, and I can tell you it will not happen again in my courtroom. There is a lot of pressure in this courtroom with the number of cases I must hear everyday (about 100), but from now on I will take more time on cases like this.”
Kowalski and Piper say that one reason a defendant like Arbelaez manages to escape the justice system by posting bond is the lack of attention paid to bond hearings, which take place in crowded courtrooms and are done hastily. Little investigation is done on the defendant before bond is lowered.
For example, the company that Arbelaez claimed to work for in Miami is not listed in any telephone book. There is no listing of anyone with his name at the Miami address he gave the courts.
”There have been many requests for a separate, central Bond Court,”
Kowalski said, ”but it is slow in coming.”
”If there were a separate Bond Court,” Piper said, ”this would not have to happen at all. There would be time to check out someone like Arbelaez before he gets the chance to leave town.”
”I see this everyday,” said Sgt. Michael Diggs of the Cook County sheriff`s fugitive warrants section. ”Foreign nationals who have the money get out because their bonds have been lowered. Then you never see them again. And there`s no way for us to get them back. Not from the countries they are from. This guy Arbelaez is gone. We won`t be seeing him again.”
”He may be gone, but he`ll be tried in absentia,” Piper said. ”We have high hopes for a conviction. We do not have high hopes that he`ll ever serve his time. The Arbelaez case exposes a big problem: Right now our criminal justice system is not as sophisticated as the criminals it deals with.”
