Agriprocessors supervisor asks court to correct his sentence

A former Agriprocessors supervisor who was the first to be sentenced after the plant immigration raid in 2008 filed a motion Monday in U.S. District Court to correct his sentence.

Juan Carlos Guerrero-Espinoza, 36, of Postville, is serving 36 months in prison and two years of the sentence is the mandatory sentence for aggravated identity theft, as agreed upon in a plea agreement, according to the motion. He was allowed to plead to two immigration charges, so it wouldn't result in deportation because his wife and children are U.S. citizens, but he had to agree to the mandatory sentence for aggravated identity theft.

About six months later, the Supreme Court issued a decision in Flores-Figueroa v. United States that changes the requirement of proof for aggravated identity theft. The government didn't have to prove that a defendant knew that a false identity belonged to an actual person but the Supreme Court ruled in this decision that a defendant has to know that a real person's identity was stolen.

The government agreed to dismiss aggravated identity theft charges against others charged in the Agriprocessors raid - human resources employee Laura Althouse, supervisor Brent Beebe and vice president Sholom Rubashkin, the motion contends. Guerrero-Espinoza is the only one in this case serving a consecutive two year sentence based on this offense.

Guerrero-Espinoza is asking the court to vacate or correct his sentence on the identity theft charge based on the Supreme Court decision. Without the increased sentence, he would have sentenced to 19 months in prison, which will be completed in February.