Trump admin celebrated the prosecution of accused MS-13 ringleaders. Then the case fell apart twice

By Katelyn Polantz, CNN

(CNN) — The Trump administration celebrated the arrival of an alleged MS-13 mastermind on American soil in March 2025.

But it was Moises Rivera-Luna — a man whom the Justice Department says ordered murders in the US from inside a Salvadoran jail cell more than a decade ago — who fell to his knees, stunned and grateful, in a Washington, DC, courtroom this April.

It was the second time in five months the Justice Department had tried him before a federal jury. And for the second time, his jury failed to reach a verdict.

Portrayed as a brutal gang leader known as “Viejo Santos,” or “Old Saint,” Rivera-Luna was squarely among the types of criminal defendants President Donald Trump and, by extension, DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro, has most sought to convict. But over the past year, the case against Rivera-Luna has run up against two juries in Washington that simply couldn’t agree, ending both rounds of the Justice Department’s efforts in mistrials.

“I’ve done this a long time and haven’t seen one quite like this one,” Judge Royce Lamberth, who’s been on the bench for nearly 40 years, said as the second trial neared its deadlocked end.

It’s unclear exactly what broke down during jury deliberations in both trials.

The arc of this case, though, has become unusually commonplace in the federal court in Washington this year.

Pirro’s office has secured some convictions at trial in federal court, and touted several successful prosecutions of violent crime in Washington’s local Superior Court.

Yet Pirro’s office has a jury problem. An increasingly alarming number of cases have fallen apart this year in DC’s federal court — even when the cases appear to be strong arguments against violent crime, relatively straightforward to prove, and tried by experienced prosecutors.

Before the MS-13 case was re-tried in April, the DC US Attorney’s Office had secured convictions in only four of the eight federal cases tried before Washington juries since January.

Since the MS-13 case’s jury hung in April, the US Attorney’s Office has tried nearly a dozen more criminal cases in DC’s federal court.

In two, the defendants were acquitted. Four of the trials ended in deadlock, with jurors reporting in courtroom notes that they deliberated “hopelessly” and were in complete “impasse.” Mistrials were declared.

That track record for the US Attorney’s Office is essentially unheard of in recent memory, according to over two dozen Washington, DC, investigators, former prosecutors, defense attorneys and other legal experts. Many of the people in the legal community asked not to be named because they practice in the DC federal courthouse or have ties to the US attorney’s office.

Federal juries typically decide to convict defendants in criminal trials nationwide at a rate of about 90%, according to federal judiciary statistics.

Several people in Washington’s legal community who’ve interacted with federal jurors say perhaps the juries are politically unhappy with the Trump administration and, thus, take issue with the Justice Department.

But in cases like MS-13, the jurors simply appear to be more closely scrutinizing the cases presented to them by the Justice Department, many of the legal community sources say.

“This is not a political case. I think this is a failure of proof and a stubbornness born of desperation on the part of the prosecutors’ office,” Robert Feitel, who is one of two lawyers representing one of the MS-13 defendants, told CNN recently.

While each case at trial where Pirro’s office has struggled to convict is different, several of the people in the legal community have called the trend with the DC juries in federal court “embarrassing” or described it as dire. The cases — some being retried weeks or months later — are bogging down a US attorney’s office that has already been stretched thin with Trump-prompted firings and departures and sullied by Pirro’s political missteps in cases the president has wanted.

Many fear how even the office’s most experienced prosecutors might fare in trials set for the coming months. That includes the trial to begin this week for an alleged conspirator in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Old Saint and the ‘eat chicken’ order

At very least, the MS-13 case has become the portrait of the unpredictability of Washington, DC, juries.

“It’s just the wheels of justice rolling along,” Christopher Davis, the defense attorney of a cooperating witness in the MS-13 case, told CNN during the April trial.

“DC juries tend to lean left, and they’re highly educated,” Davis said. “They take their job seriously. They overturn every stone.”

The MS-13 case grappled with severe violence in the community, putting on trial five murders or assaults the Justice Department says were prompted by the orders of gang leaders years ago. The top defendant was Rivera-Luna, a stone-faced alleged mastermind who wore glasses every day in court and politely interacted with his lawyer in Spanish. Guatemalan authorities had apprehended him, sending him to the US in custody last year.

Prosecutors say Rivera-Luna was at the top of the gang hierarchy when MS-13 members carried out several shootings and stabbings of their peers in the DC area who breached the organization’s codes from 2008 to 2010.

One of the victims had shifted a knife he had between his pockets at a gang meeting, breaking a rule of the brotherhood, at a park just outside DC. A few days later the man had been lured into the woods, shot and left to die. Another riding a bicycle while wearing a red bandana was perceived as a rival and gunned down by MS-13 members, prosecutors say.

Rivera-Luna was recorded on phone calls in those years speaking to a man in the DC area — whom years later has become one of the trial witnesses against him — from inside a Latin American prison.

Both juries at the two trials heard the audio of Rivera-Luna telling the MS-13 contact, in Spanish, “You have 13 days to eat chicken,” the prosecutor said.

“He was giving me 13 days to kill someone,” the witness testified later about that call.

Rivera-Luna’s trial co-defendant, Tokiro Rodas Ramirez, had been picked up by authorities in Honduras’ capital city during a soccer game in 2022. Now in the US in custody, the latter defendant is tall and broad-shouldered, and expressive in the courtroom, smiling regularly at jurors and others watching the case. His nickname within MS-13, according to court records, was “Perverso,” and he had been a local leader of the gang in the DC region when the assaults took place, prosecutors alleged.

Lamberth, who has presided over the conspiracy case since 2013, ushered the two men over the past year swiftly toward a first trial in December 2025.

The case’s longtime lead prosecutor Nihar Mohanty and others from the DC US Attorney’s Office had previously won jury convictions of co-conspirators at trial in 2013. The Justice Department also secured a string of guilty pleas and cooperation from others.

“These cases come with a playbook,” the witness’ attorney Davis, who has tried nearly a dozen similar MS-13 conspiracy cases, said. “It’s hard to screw up these cases” from the government’s perspective.

December deliberations

The December trial jury began deliberations after nine trial days and hearing from 22 witnesses called by the Justice Department. Initially, the December jury told Lamberth in a note they were close to unanimity on at least one of the three charges.

Then another morning of deliberation passed. Another note to the judge arrived. Any consensus had fallen apart, the jury said, indicating one juror refused to be impartial and continue deliberating with the others.

Lamberth drew out from that juror that he believed the deliberations had broken down into bullying.

“I feel like I have made my point that I have come to a final decision many times,” the holdout juror, who has not been identified publicly, told the judge, according to a court transcript. “And then it just seems like it’s an organized attack of over and over and over the same questions.”

The man said he had broken down crying in the jury room.

Pirro, when asked by CNN about how the trial in December resulted in a hung jury, matter-of-factly said Mohanty and other prosecutors would just need to try the case again.

“We’ll do whatever it takes within the bounds of the law to bring the guilty to justice. Whatever it takes,” Pirro said. “And you know what? I have great prosecutors on that case, and I think that that (jury) note speaks for itself.”

A second trial

By April, Mohanty and another prosecutor had the defendants Rivera-Luna and Rodas Ramirez back in front of a new jury pool in Lamberth’s courtroom.

Mohanty delivered a nearly identical opening statement to this second jury in April as he did at the December trial.

One rule of the gang, Mohanty explained in his opening, was “kill rival gang members at every opportunity” and “greenlight,” or kill, MS-13 members that didn’t follow the gang’s rules.

The defense lawyers insisted to the jury that their client’s affiliation with MS-13 or their gang tattoos weren’t proof of criminality.

By the third week of April, the new jury had fully heard the case. Yet the jury’s work appeared to be going haywire, again, within a day of deliberations.

The jury said in a note they couldn’t agree to two of three criminal counts.

By that Thursday, the second day of deliberations, another afternoon note showed they had unraveled further:

“We are not in agreement and some jurors have expressed they are firm in their votes … We are unsure of how to move forward. We have confirmed that even after further review and continued discussion these jurors are adamant this will not change their vote.”

Lamberth, beginning to show his frustration, refused to call a mistrial.

The jurors returned Friday morning, April 17, to continue deliberations. They said nothing from the jury room to the judge nearly all day.

At 4 p.m., Lamberth’s deputy called the prosecutors and the two defendants’ defense lawyers back into the courtroom to see printouts of a new and more confusing note from the jury.

“We have reached a verdict on one count; however, discussions have once again stalled. We have one juror who has repeatedly stated they are firm on their decisions. This particular juror also stated on the first day that they are comfortable not reaching a consensus,” the jury foreperson wrote. “We are unsure how to move forward, as it does not appear we will reach a consensus.”

Rivera-Luna’s lawyer, Alfred Guillaume, a typically dapper and relaxed attorney with a pocket square, read it over several times. Rodas Ramirez’s attorney Feitel, more prone to fidgeting, paced around the courtroom, popping mints in his mouth.

The defense lawyers asked Lamberth to accept a partial verdict. That would likely bring to an end the 15-year-old case.

“Denied,” Lamberth snapped.

The defense lawyers huddled in the corner of the court room, trying to plot what to do next.

Mohanty, sitting at the top of the prosecutors’ table, hung his head in his hand, rubbing his temples.

The court would need more time to decide what to do and Lamberth sent the jurors and the lawyers home for the weekend.

To try again

A cheer erupted from the jury room when the final of the 12 jurors arrived late Monday morning, April 20, to try again with deliberations.

They sent a note, however, 15 minutes later. A courtroom deputy read the jury’s message aloud to the lawyers in the courtroom: “We discussed as a jury and no longer have consensus on the count we had previously reached a verdict on.”

“This is the case that will never die,” Guillaume responded.

“I suppose the good news is I’ll get to see you again, Your Honor,” Mohanty, the prosecutor, said.

After Lamberth declared the mistrial, the prosecutors and defense attorneys went to talk with the jurors about what happened.

All 12 jurors from the April trial declined to speak to CNN as they exited. But those in touch with them reported they appeared to be genuinely unable to reach a conclusion, even after having sketched out extensive notes in the jury room on white boards. They had appeared to gel as a group, with some bringing tulips and cupcakes to court on the final day.

“I was encouraged by how seriously they took their job,” Guillaume said as he was leaving the courthouse.

But would he want to try this case again, I asked. “It’s my job. I gotta try this case,” he said, clearly frustrated and shaking his head.

The case against the two alleged MS-13 leaders is set to be retried again, for a third time, beginning in mid-September.

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