Judge Tosses Out Woman's Life Term in Florida Drug Case

federal judge on Tuesday tossed out the life sentence imposed on a woman connected to a major drug trafficking ring during South Florida's hyper-violent "cocaine cowboys" years because the woman got bad advice from her previous lawyers. The decision by U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard means that Yuby Ramirez, 41, will be freed from prison after serving almost 12 years. She will, however, be detained for now by immigration authorities and may be deported to her native Colombia. The ruling came after the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that Ramirez's lawyers during her 2001 trial never properly explained she could get a life sentence if she went to trial instead of taking a plea deal and 10-year sentence. Ramirez was convicted for her role in the killing of a government witness against now-imprisoned cocaine kingpins Willie Falcon and Sal Magluta. "Judge Lenard did the right thing today," said Ramirez lawyer David O. Markus, who along with Robin Kaplan has been representing her for free. "This was a very, very emotional case for everyone involved. Everyone agreed she was the least culpable person in this case." Ramirez said at an earlier hearing she would have pleaded guilty before her trial but was told by her attorneys that either way she would likely get only 10 years in prison. Although she maintained her innocence in the witness's 1993 slaying, she signed a document Tuesday confessing that she played a part in the killings of three people by drug ring hit men. Falcon and Magluta ran one of several Miami-based cocaine trafficking rings that moved many tons of drugs through South Florida during the 1980s and 1990s, before the smuggling trade relocated to the U.S.-Mexico border. By the early 1990s, the Drug Enforcement Administration was closing in and the two decided to bring in Colombian hit teams to eliminate witnesses against them. Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Davis said Ramirez acknowledged allowing the hit team to stay at her home southwest of Miami and use it to store firearms. He said she also helped set up the slayings by pretending at different times to be interested in buying a car and boat one of the victims was selling, even faking romantic interest in one witness to draw him out. At another point, Davis said she told the hit team's leader she could kill one witness and the witness's brother herself if she was given a small weapon with a silencer. Ramirez also drove her truck to the scene of that double killing as a getaway car, although ultimately it wasn't used. "She was facilitating their plan to murder government witnesses," Davis said. The hit team leaders testified at Ramirez's trial they were paid $120,000 for their work. They received only six-year sentences, which Markus has repeatedly said underscored the unfairness of Ramirez's life term. Magluta, meanwhile, is serving a 195-year prison sentence. Falcon, who cut a deal with prosecutors, was sentenced to 20 years.