Miami
Defense lawyers countered that agent Bartolo Hernandez and trainer Julio Estrada stayed within the law while helping players navigate the free-agent complexities Cuban defectors must overcome to play big-league U.S. baseball.
Now that closing arguments are done, jurors are expected to begin deliberations this morning after six weeks of testimony. Hernandez and Estrada are charged with conspiracy and alien smuggling.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael “Pat” Sullivan said trial evidence showed the pair decided to persuade leaders of an existing, sometimes violent human smuggling network based in Cancun, Mexico, to switch from bringing regular Cuban citizens off the island for $10,000 each to the big-payday possibilities of elite Cuban ballplayers.
“They would all get rich,” Sullivan said.
Cuban players must establish residency in a third country such as Mexico or Haiti before they can be declared MLB free agents and are cleared by the U.S. government from the economic embargo against Cubans. Much of Sullivan’s argument focused on player residency documents and travel papers filled with falsehoods, such as fake jobs and addresses, and evidence of bribes paid to Mexican immigration officials to speed things up.
“This was a scam,” Sullivan said. “They are chock full of misrepresentations and lies throughout.”
Testimony showed Estrada’s company got 30 percent of the player contracts and Hernandez got 5 percent. Some of the bigger names among the nearly three dozen smuggled players include Jose Abreu of the Chicago White Sox, who signed a $68 million deal; the Seattle Mariners’ Leonys Martin, who got a $15.5 million contract; and Adeiny Hechavarria of the Miami Marlins, who signed for $10 million.
Lawyers for Hernandez and Estrada, neither of whom testified, sought to distance them from any criminal aspects of the smuggling venture.
They said neither man encouraged players to come to the U.S. illegally and that neither was involved directly with the smuggling of players by boat from Cuba, although there were a number of contacts and meetings with some of the shadier characters.
Hernandez simply negotiated deals with the teams as sports agent, his attorneys said.
“What the government has done is, they have tried to convict Bart Hernandez by association,” said defense lawyer Daniel Rashbaum. “He is absolutely, 100 percent innocent.”
Rashbaum and co-counsel Jeffrey Marcus reminded jurors that players who testified, including those who came to the U.S. illegally without visas, insisted that Hernandez urged them to wait until their legal documents were ready. Some did not and were still permitted to stay and sign with teams.
“Every single player said Bart Hernandez told me: ‘Wait. Be patient. You must come into this country legally,’” Marcus said.
Estrada attorney Sabrina Puglisi said her client saw a way to benefit financially from the desire of Cuban ballplayers to escape oppression and build better lives in the U.S. She said Estrada had no role in getting the player residency papers but mainly trained them and saw to their needs until they were cleared legally to come to the U.S.
“You heard from these players — they were desperate to leave,” Puglisi told jurors. “They wanted to be free. Julio always encouraged the players to do things the right way.”
Both defense lawyers pointed out that none of the 33 Cuban players associated with Hernandez and Estrada have had their legal U.S. status revoked or lost their permission to play baseball here.
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Nats-Orioles TV dispute hearing postponed by snow
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NEW YORK (AP) — An appeals court hearing in the long-running television dispute between the Baltimore Orioles and Washington Nationals has been postponed because of snow.
The Appellate Division of New York Supreme Court in Manhattan had been scheduled to hear arguments Tuesday. The rescheduled date hasn’t been set.
New York Supreme Court Justice Lawrence K. Marks in November 2015 threw out an arbitration decision that said the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network, which is controlled by the Orioles, owes the Nationals about $298 million for the team’s 2012-16 television rights.
MASN was established in March 2005 after the Montreal Expos relocated to Washington and became the Nationals, moving into what had been Baltimore’s exclusive broadcast territory since 1972. The Orioles were given a supermajority partnership interest in MASN, and when the parties couldn’t agree on a rights fee for 2012-16, they appeared in April 2012 before baseball’s three-man Revenue Sharing Definitions Committee, as required in the MASN agreement.
The RSDC issued its decision in 2014, and MASN and the Orioles sued, claiming the arbitration was improper because the law firm Proskauer Rose, which represented the Nationals, at times worked for MLB and the teams of all three arbitrators.
Marks issued a stay last July preventing the RSDC from holding a rehearing, pending determination of the appeal.