It comes after only a few hours of deliberations.
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During closing arguments, federal prosecutor Todd Robinson said it didn’t matter if either one of the defendants actually fired the shot that killed Terry.
Terry’s death exposed the government’s failed “Operation Fast and Furious”, which allowed weapons to be sold illegally to Mexican cartels in hopes of tracking them back to cartel leaders.
The trial of two men in the killing of a Border Patrol agent during a 2010 shootout in the Arizona desert is winding down in federal court in Tucson.
The jury found Jesus Leonel Sanchez-Meza and Ivan Soto-Barraza guilty of all counts. At the end of the operation, close to 1,500 weapons ended up getting lost and likely smuggled into Mexico.
Terry was a member of the elite BORTAC team that had been working in the area known as Mesquite Seep. An agent then fired nonlethal bean bags, and members of the rip crew began firing from assault rifles, authorities said.
As they came across Sanchez-Meza, Soto-Barraza and three others on a rip crew, an agent yelled “policia” and the bandits refused to stop.
“It doesn’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt, it proves it beyond any doubt whatsoever”, Robinson said. They face a sentence of life in prison.
Defense attorneys tried to claim that the men were not there to commit a robbery and that the shooting was done in self-defense. The lawyers said they had no comment after the verdict.
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Two other men charged in the case – including a man who assembled the crew but who was not present that night – have pleaded guilty.
