Pubdate: Thu, 03 Mar 2003
Source: Dallas Observer (TX)
Copyright: 2003 2000 New Times, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.dallasobserver.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/884
Author: Carlton Stowers

HEAVY TRAFFIC

Border Drug Lords Get Rich While Attorney Mike Barclay Gets Worn Out 
Defending The Poor Smugglers

Rogelio Sanchez Brito drove his red Ford pickup south to the Millennium 
Hotel in the Mexican border town of Ojinaga, where he turned it over to a 
man he'd never before seen. Brito, young and nervous, waited at the hotel 
for two days before his truck was returned, loaded with 300 pounds of 
marijuana hidden in its tires and beneath the floorboards in tape-wrapped 
bundles. For his first attempt at smuggling drugs and delivering them to a 
dealer in Odessa, Texas, he was to earn $4,000. Had it not been for a 
drug-sniffing dog named Rufus, he might have made it.

The desert is cool on most starlit summer evenings in the Texas Trans 
Pecos. The open, vast valleys feed the breezes that are but one of many 
pastoral qualities in the Alpine-Marathon-Marfa-Presidio region.

This area just north of the Tex-Mex border is peaceful and isolated, the 
nearest Wal-Mart 80 miles away in Fort Stockton, the closest shopping mall 
a three-hour drive to Odessa. To the immediate south, however, another 
world, dangerous and deadly, thrives. On the border, away from the serenity 
and soft city lights, it is dirty business as usual. Along the Rio Grande 
River, which marks the winding line separating the United States and 
Mexico, smugglers of drugs and illegal aliens are on parade. On this night 
alone, local Border Patrol and Drug Enforcement Administration officials 
make six drug seizures and arrest 42 undocumented immigrants. They 
confiscate 1,340 pounds of marijuana, two and a half pounds of cocaine and 
one loaded pistol.

A few miles away, fellow agents attempt to stop four alien 
"backpackers"--smugglers who walk drugs across the river and into 
Texas--but they disappear into the rugged foothills and avoid capture, 
leaving behind 400 pounds of marijuana.

At a checkpoint near Presidio, 12 additional drug smugglers are taken into 
custody. A few nights earlier, agents stop a suspicious-looking moving van 
just west of Pecos and, after removing a wall of furniture stacked in the 
rear, find 17 undocumented immigrants--men, women and several children--who 
were to be delivered to a "stash house" drop-off in Dallas. In the truck, 
agents found just two gallons of water for the dangerous two-day trip. 
Despite the collective efforts of the region's law enforcement--Border 
Patrol, Customs, DEA, U.S. marshals, park rangers, local sheriff's and 
police departments--the illegal flow continues along the 420 miles of 
border they are assigned to watch over. "We aren't stopping it," says 
Brewster County Sheriff Ronny Dodson. "On the best of days we might just 
slow it down a little.

If someone tries to tell you the situation is getting better, he's blowing 
smoke.

Actually, most of what we catch is by accident." Dodson and his six 
deputies patrol the state's largest county.

Stretching across 6,128 square miles, it is roughly the size of the state 
of New Hampshire. The official assignment of DEA agents stationed in the 
region is to "disrupt and dismantle." Mostly they can only disrupt.

There is too much money, too many smugglers and too much rugged geography 
involved. At the federal courthouse in Pecos, the Western District docket 
is so crammed that visiting judges from New York, Vermont and Mississippi 
have been asked to help with the caseload.

The 90-bed Pecos jail stays filled to capacity while detention hearings, 
arraignments, indictments, jury trials and plea bargains drone on in nearby 
courtrooms. Records for the past three years indicate that no fewer than 
500 criminal cases, the majority of them smuggling-related, are filed in 
Pecos annually. "I was on the bench there for eight years," says U.S. 
District Judge Royal Furgeson, who now presides in San Antonio, "and by the 
time I was ready to leave, I thought I'd put everybody in the world in 
jail. Truth is, I hardly made a dent." Mike Barclay knows well that sense 
of hopelessness. Barclay, an Alpine-based defense attorney, has lost track 
of the number of traffickers he's represented since moving his practice 
from Dallas in the early '80s. He is quite familiar with the smugglers' 
determination. "The situation," he says, "is not getting better--and it 
won't get any better." Barclay, 73, came here to ease into retirement, 
weary of the urban life and the violent crimes he was hired to defend.

Today, however, there is little leisure time for the colorful, gifted 
litigator who many now refer to as "the dean of West Texas trial lawyers." 
It is not unusual for him to have as many as a dozen cases at a time on the 
always-crowded Pecos court docket. Nevertheless, Barclay throws himself 
into each case, passionately working for his clients--most of whom are 
demonized by the press and public, as they are integral parts of the drug 
trade. Barclay defends the middlemen who are the nightly targets of the 
Trans Pecos law enforcement agents, the "mules" who transport the drugs and 
the "coyotes" who move human cargo from abject Mexico poverty to the 
promise of minimum-wage jobs in the United States. While the drug lords and 
slave traders wait safely on their ranches and in plush villas, counting 
their money, and the U.S. dealers ply their trade in hiding, the smugglers 
are the high-risk takers, usually desperate and destitute men from the 
poverty-stricken Mexican border towns. Barclay manages to make the best of 
this bleak milieu.

His professional yet easygoing style has won him admirers from all sides of 
the courtroom.

He has helped make sure that the crushing load of drug cases is not used as 
an excuse to deprive the mules and coyotes their due process.

Despite his age, he has rekindled a passion for his work, once again 
embracing the youthful, idealistic notion that, with care and hard work, he 
can help ensure that something akin to justice--or, at least, fairness--is 
meted out day-to-day in this hopeless border war. "He's a throwback to the 
lawyers of bygone days," Furgeson says. "For him, making certain our 
justice system works is more than a job; it is a calling."

Mike Barclay began his career in Dallas a half-century ago and for 30 years 
had a reputation as one of the city's premier criminal defense lawyers.

He defended all manner of thieves, murderers and rapists, and he was viewed 
by those in the judicial system as a learned, always-prepared litigator.

His courtroom theatrics were legendary. "Over the years, he's reached a 
status where he probably gets away with more in court than he should," 
Furgeson says. "Prosecutors often defer to him and rarely object, he's 
friends with everyone in the courthouse and, most important, he commands 
great respect." He also commands a caseload far greater than any he ever 
juggled in Dallas. "I wasn't here long before I realized that the courts 
were literally inundated with cases of drug and alien trafficking," Barclay 
says. His phone rings constantly. Weary judges ask if he'll take court 
appointments and an occasional client who couldn't afford to hire counsel 
for his own defense or that of a family member.

Barclay spends much of his time making the 100-mile trek to the federal 
courthouse in Pecos, where a fast-moving "rocket docket" is the order of 
the day. The phrase was born during the tenure of the late U.S. District 
Judge Lucius Bunton. Because of the flood of cases arriving in his court, 
he made it clear to attorneys--defense and prosecution alike--that two 
witnesses were not to be called when one unwitting accomplices. Mexican 
dealers will spot the parked vehicle of a vacationing family from Texas or 
New Mexico and wait until night to place a cargo of drugs in some hidden 
spot. That done, they take down the license plate number and do a computer 
check to determine the owner's home address. "An innocent-looking family 
isn't going to have much trouble getting back across the border," Barclay 
says. "They get home, park their RV in the driveway and while they're 
sleeping, the dealers sneak up and retrieve their drug shipment." More and 
more, he says, unaware victims are being lured into the trade.

He tells of an independent Garland truck driver who responded to a Dallas 
Morning News classified ad last winter, seeking someone to haul a load of 
cattle from Presidio to Fort Worth. He was informed that a loaded trailer 
would be waiting for him. He was not told that he also would be hauling 
more than a ton of marijuana.

Nor did he have any idea that he would be stopped, arrested and jailed. 
Then there are the backpackers, young men familiar with the rugged terrain 
and willing to hike across the border with 50 to 100 pounds of marijuana. 
Often equipped with night-vision goggles and two-way radios, they may 
travel as far as 80 or 90 miles on foot before reaching their assigned 
drop-off point. "Not only are they familiar with the region," Sheriff 
Dodson says, "but they're in constant contact with scouts on this side who 
alert them to where we [law enforcement] are. I can assure you that every 
time I pull out of the parking lot in front of my office and start driving 
south, someone is on a cell phone or walkie-talkie, letting the smugglers 
know." Getting illegal aliens across is only a bit more difficult.

In some cases, the trucks hauling them northward simply pull over a few 
miles before reaching a Border Patrol checkpoint, allowing them to walk 
through the desert and around the inspection station, only to be picked up 
a few miles beyond it. In other instances, they are picked up by 
all-terrain vehicles and driven through the darkened desert to a waiting 
truck. "If," Leon says, "they can make it up to Interstate 20, they're 
pretty much home free. From there they can go to New Mexico, Lubbock or 
Dallas."

It was in Dallas where Barclay honed his craft, where he developed the many 
skills he would need to navigate the heavy traffic of the border drug war. 
Like his sense of humor. "Mike," says retired Dallas County District Judge 
Don Metcalfe, "was a rarity when he was practicing here. He was not only 
shrewd; he had this wonderful sense of humor that kept everyone 
off-balance." Classmates at SMU Law School, they shared an office during 
the early stages of their legal careers.

And occasionally worked on cases together.

It was during that time that Metcalfe became aware of the maverick 
tendencies of his lifelong friend. "After I became a judge," he says, "I 
immediately appointed Mike to a couple of cases, thinking if I could 
successfully control him in the courtroom, I'd be able to handle just about 
any situation." It wasn't always easy. "I knew he was an excellent criminal 
lawyer--maybe the best in Dallas at the time--but it was just impossible to 
anticipate what he might do." He recalls a trial during which a 
particularly natty Dallas police detective was on the stand, testifying 
against one of Barclay's clients.

It was a time before men routinely used hairspray, yet not a single hair on 
the officer's head was out of place.

Suddenly, Barclay interrupted the proceedings to urgently request a 
conference at the judge's bench.

Leaning toward Metcalfe, the lawyer handed him a note: Judge, it read, the 
boys in Homicide Division are wondering if the witness wears a hairpiece.

May I inquire? It was during that trial that Barclay, in his effort to 
prove that the officers who arrested his client had not properly identified 
themselves as police after bursting through an apartment door, called the 
accused's girlfriend to the stand.

Did she, Barclay wanted to know, hear anyone announce themselves as a 
police officer? Barclay, of course, already knew the answer she would 
provide: "No sir," the young woman testified. "All I heard was, 'Freeze, 
motherfucker, or die.'" Once, while cross-examining a witness who could not 
remember if his client was missing an eye, Barclay removed his own 
prosthetic eye that he'd worn since a 1947 semipro football accident and 
placed it on the witness stand. "If he looked like this," he said, pointing 
to his own vacant eye socket, "don't you think you would recall it?" He 
clearly enjoyed and was devoted to his work, always quick with an amusing 
story to pass along to colleagues; a man to whom laughter came easily.

As the '80s approached, the career malaise that often befalls defense 
lawyers hit. Losing three consecutive court-appointed capital murder cases 
didn't help. "I finally realized I was burning out," he reflects, "and 
began looking for a way to escape everything--the violent crime, the Dallas 
traffic, the whole big-city rat race." Years earlier he'd begun the habit 
of vanishing into the Big Bend area for Christmas vacations and became 
enamored with the wide-open spaces and slow pace of the region.

By the time he'd made the decision to close down his Dallas practice and 
semi-retire, he'd decided that Alpine, with a population just shy of 6,000, 
would be his new home. "My thinking at the time was that I'd keep my 
license and maybe help draw up a will or two now and then," he says as he 
sits in his small office behind the home he shares with artist wife 
Barbara. Originally the Alpine hospital, built in 1907, it was remodeled 
into a bed-and-breakfast during World War II. "Now," Barclay says with his 
baritone laugh, "I'm the only lawyer in Alpine with 14 rooms and seven 
baths." It's that lighthearted approach that helps him so well in the 
courtroom today. Judge Furgeson says he has Barclay's voir dire questioning 
to potential jurors memorized: "He'll smile at everyone and then tell them 
how he'd moved out here years ago from Dallas. He'll say that after he'd 
been here awhile he phoned his mother to tell her how friendly everyone in 
this part of the country was. He tells them she just laughed and said, 
'Honey, they're not friendly; they're just lonely...'" More than once 
Barclay has even resorted to writing his own poetry in an attempt to 
deflect a judge's anger over the fact a client has unexpectedly skipped a 
court date. Like the time defendant Hernando Felix-Yague (pronounced 
"yah-gee") failed to appear: Hernando Felix Yague Has a mind that's now 
become foggy. On a search for his person Pre-trial is still cursin'. But I 
just learned this day He's down Mexico way. "I can't tell you how many 
times I've thought I ought to charge him with contempt or at least 
reprimand him," Furgeson says, "but I knew if I opened my mouth, I'd start 
laughing."

Despite the free spirit Barclay brings to his work, it is obvious that he 
is held in high regard by his peers.

Fellow defense lawyers, and an occasional prosecutor, routinely seek his 
advice.

Even law enforcement officials begrudgingly applaud his encyclopedic 
knowledge of the law. "He came out here," Sheriff Dodson says, "and taught 
us how to do our jobs." Dodson, a member of the Alpine police force when he 
first became acquainted with Barclay, admits that the day-to-day details of 
matters such as showing just cause for a search warrant were often 
overlooked. "The first half-dozen cases Mike defended were dismissed 
because he was able to easily show that law enforcement hadn't done 
everything by the book. Thanks to him, we learned quickly to dot the i's 
and cross the t's." Dodson laughs when Barclay insists on retelling a story 
he heard about the sheriff shortly after settling in Alpine. Dodson, it 
seems, was sworn in as an Alpine patrolman almost a year before his 21st 
birthday. "He was issued a badge and a gun," Barclay says, "but, by law, he 
was too young to purchase ammunition. So, for the first year of his law 
enforcement career, he had to take his wife with him down to Morrison's 
True Value so she could buy him bullets." A recent Barclay client had made 
it through the border checkpoint, only to be stopped by a state trooper 
north of Alpine for a defective taillight on his truck.

The frightened driver immediately jumped from the cab, his hands stretched 
into the air, and yelled out, "You've got me, don't shoot." Stunned by the 
quick admission, the trooper investigated and found 750 pounds of marijuana 
and a drunk woman in the trailer the man was pulling. Then there was the 
smuggler whose pickup engine heated up after he'd reached the American side 
of the border.

While pulled over to allow it to cool down, an off-duty Border Patrol agent 
stopped to lend a hand. During casual conversation as they tinkered with 
the engine, the Good Samaritan asked what the driver was hauling.

When the man openly boasted that he had a 1,400-pound load of marijuana he 
was taking to Dallas, he was arrested. Which is to say there are a lot of 
cases Barclay doesn't have much chance of winning. "But what impresses me 
about him," Judge Furgeson says, "is the fact that once he's in the 
courtroom there is no way to tell if his client is court-appointed or one 
who's able to pay for counsel.

Mike works equally hard for them all." When the compliment is passed along, 
Barclay only shrugs. "My role is that of any other defense attorney.

If my client is innocent, I've got to do everything I can to prove it. If 
his arrest or the investigation wasn't conducted properly, I'm going to 
raise hell about it." His actions suggest it is those young, ignorant, 
out-of-work men caught in their first, desperate smuggling attempts that 
Barclay wishes most to help. After 45 years of practice, he holds to a 
belief that one illegal act does not make a person forever evil. "These 
people's lives," he says, "are bad enough already."
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