Distributor of Chemicals Used in Meth Gets Life

In the conclusion of a pioneering California drug case, a Las Vegas man has been sentenced to life in prison for possessing the ingredients for making methamphetamine--without any evidence that he had actually cooked the drug.

The case of Jessie Rodriguez Barron, 49, has long been viewed as significant by authorities attempting to stifle the proliferation of methamphetamine, particularly in inland regions of Southern California.

When Barron was indicted in June 1994, law enforcement officers were still struggling with a maddening facet of their fight against “speed”: Its ingredients, taken alone and used under different circumstances, are legal. Pseudoephedrine, for instance, a primary ingredient, is a decongestant; hydriodic acid has a variety of industrial uses, such as cleaning metal.

Authorities alleged that in the early 1990s, Barron was a key player in a group that sold more than 40,000 gallons of hydriodic acid to methamphetamine “cooks.” According to Assistant U.S. Atty. Michael J. Stern, there was no evidence that Barron himself had manufactured methamphetamine, but the chemicals he bought and sold were used to make batches of meth sold throughout the Inland Empire and the Los Angeles area.

The U.S. attorney’s office filed charges that were viewed as unusual by the law enforcement community. Until then, Stern said, few people who had been caught with the ingredients of meth in California--but didn’t produce it--had been charged with a crime.

Barron was believed the first in California to be charged in federal court under the legal theory that his sales of a “precursor chemical” constituted a conspiracy to assist in the production of methamphetamine, Stern said.

Barron fled to Las Vegas after he was indicted and lived there until his arrest last year, authorities said Tuesday. Because of the delay in his case, many others have since been charged, convicted and sentenced under the same legal theory.

The case is still seen as a significant one in the battle against methamphetamine, Stern said. It ended late Monday when U.S. District Judge Dickran Tevrezian sentenced Barron to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

“For years, until this case, people were not getting indicted when they were distributing the chemicals,” Stern said.

“They were supporting the manufacture of meth. But it was only the people who were manufacturing the meth who were being charged.”

Proving in court that someone not only possessed the chemicals but knew what they would be used for remains a challenge, Stern said.

“There is nothing wrong with simply having a gallon drum of hydriodic acid,” he said. “It becomes more of a hurdle to show that, not only did they possess this stuff but show that they were acting in conjunction with people who were intending to make the drugs.”

The case marked the beginning of a trend in the fight against meth, said Assistant U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald, the methamphetamine coordinator for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles.

In 1996, two years after Barron was indicted, drug agents and prosecutors refined their strategy, moving to aggressively target chemical suppliers.

“Since then, there has been a sea change in the extent to which the chemical suppliers are indicted and investigated and prosecuted,” Fitzgerald said.

Barron’s defense attorney could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

According to the indictment against Barron, filed in U.S. District Court, Barron and several other people, including his brother, created two front companies to purchase hydriodic acid in the early 1990s.

To persuade chemical wholesalers to sell him the acid, Barron went through an exhaustive process to fraudulently transfer ownership of several defunct gold mines in the Mojave Desert to himself. He then claimed to the chemical wholesalers that he planned to use the hydriodic acid in mining operations.

Barron also used the phony companies to launder more than $1 million in illicit proceeds through various banks in the Los Angeles area, Stern said.