Homing in on everything from dope smoking to FBI-funded rent, defense attorneys attempted to discredit the prosecution’s star witness in federal District Court Tuesday during the second day of the retrial of two VIPD officers and an alleged accomplice charged with extorting $5,000 from a suspected drug dealer in exchange for destroying evidence and returning seized property.
Richard Motta, 51, took the stand Tuesday for the second time in a month, serving as the one prosecution witness who was party to almost every major event in the alleged extortion plot against him by former VIPD chief of detectives, Capt. Enrique Saldana, and his alleged cohorts, VIPD Sgt. George Greene and St. Croix resident Luis Roldan.
Enter Motta
Motta’s debut under oath came in December, when the same case was tried for seven days but ended in mistrial when the jury failed to reach a verdict.
After opening statements Monday, day one of the retrial had centered around the lead FBI agent in the seven-month investigation that led to the arrest of Saldana, Greene and Roldan on Aug. 4.
Special Agent Jackson Purkey’s testimony allowed prosecutors to enter into evidence a series of phone records, recorded phone calls and video footage of the final payoff obtained by fitting Motta with a body wire and hidden camera on Dec. 23, 2008.
With Motta on the stand to narrate Tuesday, jurors finally got to hear the taped phone conversations arranging the deal and see the final payoff that the U.S. attorneys call extortion.
According to Motta’s frank, and at times, combative testimony Tuesday, the story started when he and his supervisor cooked up more than two pounds of flour in a microwave and wrapped it up in plastic to make it look like a kilo of cocaine, which Motta said they intended to sell on the street for $12,000.
Before they could pass off the phony coke, though, Motta stopped by his girlfriend’s apartment in Paul M. Pearson Gardens housing community at about 11 p.m. on Dec. 4, 2008, leaving the car unlocked, windows down and radio on.
Enter Saldana
Saldana’s VIPD intelligence unit, which included Greene, happened by soon thereafter and stopped to investigate the illegally parked and unsecured car.
“A buncha cops roll in,” Motta said in court Tuesday. “I saw them take a package out that was on the back seat.”
Motta testified Tuesday that he watched from about 35 feet away as police searched, seized and towed the car, which he had borrowed from his supervisor who, in turn, had borrowed it from their employer—St. Thomas businesswoman Rosemary Sauter.
Motta said his attempts to reclaim the package of bogus drugs, some of Sauter’s business paperwork and other personal items from the car were unfruitful. He and Sauter tried at police headquarters the next day, leaving empty-handed. And Motta said he returned alone at least twice thereafter.
Soon it became apparent that police were holding the fake drugs as a bargaining chip, Motta said.
Enter Roldan
After several missed meetings with Saldana, whom other officers had instructed Motta to call in order to recoup his stuff, Motta testified that Roldan approached him on the St. Thomas waterfront near the Greenhouse restaurant on Dec. 20.
“Hey! You just that man I lookin’ for,” Motta said Tuesday, recalling Roldan’s greeting.
Full of unsolicited information, Motta said Roldan told him the package had tested negative for cocaine but positive for heroin.
“If I didn’t come up with $10,000, they gonna turn it in to the federal authorities,” Motta said when Assistant U.S. Attorney Kim Lindquist told him to repeat what Roldan said that day.
“He said they know that I got $150,000 to do some kinda hit job on Rosemary’s [Sauter] husband,” Motta said.
“There wasn’t no truth to that,” he said.
Enter the FBI
Realizing he was being set up, Motta said he took his story to Sauter, who took it to then-V.I. Police Commissioner James McCall—a personal friend. McCall took them both to see the FBI on Dec. 22.
The phone calls and video tape that jurors heard and viewed Tuesday were the result of a rushed FBI query into Motta’s claims on Dec. 22 and Dec. 23.
“I sat with the FBI. I explained to them what was going on, and they asked me to make some calls to verify it,” Motta said.
“So we started making calls,” Motta said. “A whole lotta calls.”
Agents encouraged Motta to call Roldan and set something up, recording several of their conversations in which Roldan uses terms like “mechanic” and “mechanic helper” to describe Greene and Saldana, and in which Motta insists they “throw away da t’ing,” referring to the brick of fake drugs.
“The two of them coming are the two of them in control,” Roldan told Motta at one point.
“I want them to destroy it in front of me,” Motta told Roldan. “That’s what I want.”
After several calls and a preliminary meeting at Hometown gas and grocery, Motta finally met Greene in a turnout near Anna’s Retreat on Dec. 23.
Saldana was there, but remained a silent partner, watching from inside his unmarked police vehicle parked a few feet away, federal agents testified Tuesday.
“I want to see that package squashed,” Motta told Roldan, referring to the phony cocaine. “I want to see that package smash up.”
Enter Greene
After more recorded calls between Motta and Roldan—during at least one of which Greene got on the phone—Motta drove from FBI headquarters to Frenchtown the night of Dec. 23 wearing a hidden camera and body wire and carrying $5,000 of FBI cash.
Through the ghoulish green of night vision, jurors watched the video Tuesday of Motta meeting Roldan in Frenchtown before finally walking up on Greene, who declined Motta’s offer to count the money and told Motta to put it on the back seat of his unmarked police cruiser.
“Everything’s blessed,” Greene told Motta in a voice clearly broadcast throughout the courtroom during Tuesday’s video review.
Greene promised Motta the package would not come back to haunt him.
“What they call you?” Motta asked him.
“Greene. Like the color green,” he said.
“Everything’s straight, daddy,” Greene said.
The Cross-Examination
When the lights clicked back on and the defense launched its cross examination Tuesday, it seemed like something had jinxed the defense.
George Hodge, Roldan’s defender, stumbled around his questions—losing his train of thought, halting at dead ends or getting slapped down by numerous objections that the judge upheld time and again.
While he seemed frustrated by the rules and provoked several sidebars and forced at least one break by failing to resist dragging the December trial into the new one, Hodge set the tone for the defense. And for the rest of the day, until after 7 p.m., the cross-examination became an assault on Motta’s character and inquisition into his motives and relationships.
Hodge decried some heavy breathing that could be heard from Motta’s hidden camera as he drove to Frenchtown, insisting that Motta was smoking marijuana —- a habit Motta has not been shy talking about.
Altogether, Hodge and Saldana’s attorney, Darren Jean-Baptiste, burned up more than an hour on the marijuana issue alone.
Hodge did catch Motta in a major contradiction when, through cell phone logs entered as evidence by the prosecution, he showed that Motta and Roldan had been in contact at least six times on Dec. 21, the day before Motta first met with the FBI. Motta had earlier testified that he had never spoken to Roldan after the initial waterfront meeting and before he went to the feds.
Hodge and Jean-Baptiste both grilled Motta over the compensation he’s been paid by the FBI since he first wore a wire.
According to federal agents who testified, Motta has been paid about $4,000 in cash for “services rendered,” and nearly $21,000 in rent, living expenses and costs associated with moving safely out of the territory after the defendants were arrested in August.
“So what you’re saying is that crime does pay,” Jean-Baptiste asked Motta in a rhetorical one-liner that became commonplace towards the end of the day.
Chief Judge Curtis Gomez ordered that and many similar defense comments stricken from the record, but they still echoed in the courtroom and jury as the trial wore on.
Criminal Records
When Judge Gomez stopped Jean-Baptiste mid-inquiry and asked him to please “ask a relevant question,” Jean Baptiste apparently came up short and quickly sat down.
When it was his time, Greene’s attorney, Thurston McKelvin, asked that he be allowed to start fresh with his cross-examination first thing on Wednesday. In the gallery, family and other spectators sighed with relief.
At first, though, Gomez denied him the reprieve. But when McKelvin quickly got stuck in the weeds of a prohibited course of questioning, Gomez called it a day and sent the jury home.
Unlike the original December trial, wherein Motta described himself as a gangster and gave the defense ample ammunition to discredit the prosecution’s star witness for the remainder of the trial, only Jean-Baptiste managed to crack him a little Tuesday and give the jury a peak into Motta’s criminal past.
After Motta admitted that he’s known in some circles as a “bad boy” or “rude boy,” Jean-Baptiste asked him about his criminal record.
“That’s part of your reputation as well,” Jean-Baptiste asked.
“What?” Motta replied.
“You’re a convict,” Jean-Baptiste said.
Motta simply replied, “Yeah,” and admitted to being convicted for illegally carrying a weapon with a defaced serial number.
When McKelvin resumes the cross-examination Wednesday, he’ll do so with the knowledge that his client and Motta now have “convict” in common.
Greene was convicted last week for possessing two handguns with defaced serial numbers. He faces up to 11 years in prison and as much as $500,000 in fines.
Federal agents found the weapons in his police vehicle on Aug. 4, the day they arrested him on the extortion charges stemming from the chain of events that began 13 months ago with Motta and his kilo of fake cocaine.
Unlike Saldana, Greene is no longer fighting for his job and reputation back, but is struggling to limit his time behind bars.
Motta is expected back on the witness stand when the trial resumes at 9 a.m. Wednesday.
