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2 states say allowing travel ban would ‘unleash chaos again’

WILKES-BARRE &#8212; In one audible cry, Cynthia Diaz let it all out.For more than a week, she sat in the second row of the Luzerne County courtroom gallery while pictures of her bullet-riddled husband flashed on a projection screen, attorneys detailed the drug-filled final moments leading up to his violent death, and his alleged killer labeled other witnesses liars.When the jury foreperson Monday stood up and announced Rafael Mora-Polanco was guilty of gunning down Jorge Marrero in Hazleton on June 11, 2015, Diaz&#8217;s cries of relief were first to break the silence.Mora-Polanco, 28, of Hazleton, was immediately sentenced to life behind bars without the possibility of parole following the verdict. In a short statement, he called Marrero&#8217;s death &#8220;a tragedy,&#8221; but maintained his innocence.&#8220;Unfortunately the jurors, they believed differently,&#8221; Mora-Polanco said.The jury returned its verdict after about an hour-and-a-half in a trial that stretched into a second week Monday. More than 200 exhibits and nearly 40 witnesses, including Mora-Polanco himself, were presented last week.Diaz, who prosecutors said was separated from Marrero but was mother to his two children, cited Mora-Polanco&#8217;s lack of remorse prior to him being hauled away in shackles.&#8220;Nobody has the authority to take anybody&#8217;s life away,&#8221; Diaz said. &#8220;To me, only God has the right. You choose to take my husband&#8217;s life away from me, and you have shown no remorse for what you&#8217;ve done to my husband.&#8221;Theme of drug useDiaz said she lost Marrero to drugs three years ago. She was happy, she said in court, that the jury was able to see him as a human being as opposed to a drug addict because he was a good father and husband before his descent into drugs.Following the hearing, Assistant District Attorney Dan Zola said Marrero&#8217;s addiction was due to the loss of one of his twin sons, who died in a car accident.&#8220;He fell into that lifestyle, and it was just a downward spiral from there,&#8221; Zola said.Much of the trial centered around drug use and addiction. Each of the four eyewitnesses present in the Alter Street apartment where the altercation between Marrero and Mora-Polanco began admitted to being heavy users of heroin, cocaine and crack.Mora-Polanco and Marrero were themselves drug dealers, and prosecutors alleged the motive for Marrero&#8217;s killing was a drug deal over an eight ball of cocaine days earlier that went bad. They said Mora-Polanco believed Marrero and another drug dealer, Divine Herrera-Caudle, were trying to rip him off.Judge Michael T. Vough called the case &#8220;another example of drugs ruining life after life.&#8221;One person is dead and another is headed to prison for life, Vough said during sentencing, &#8220;over what? A couple pieces of crack cocaine? A couple of dollars?&#8221;Prosecutors&#8217; takeAccording to testimony, Mora-Polanco became &#8220;very aggressive&#8221; during the deal and warned, &#8220;Ya&#8217;ll trying to burn me. I got something for you two (expletives). I got something for you and (Marrero),&#8221; before he snatched back the drugs.Days later, Mora-Polanco called Marrero&#8217;s then-girlfriend, Jaime Bonner, to find out where he could find Marrero. Bonner, 37, testified that Mora-Polanco said &#8220;he was tired of everyone thinking he was a (expletive), and he was about to show everyone how much of a (expletive) he was.&#8221;Mora-Polanco then traveled to the Alter Street apartment where Marrero, Paula Shafer and her daughter, Joline Shafer, Tammy Grose, Kristen Lanzot and another man were all present, prosecutors said.Joline Shafer said Mora-Polanco told her Marrero &#8220;did some (expletive) up (expletive)&#8221; and he had to &#8220;get him out of here,&#8221; punctuating his statement with a throat-slashing gesture. She watched Marrero hit a crack pipe before walking out of the apartment with Mora-Polanco.The next sound she heard was gunfire.Marrero was shot a total of six times with the same smaller-caliber firearm, according to testimony. One shot struck him above the left eye. Another tore through his back. The next four came in rapid succession after he collapsed in the middle of West 4th Street with Mora-Polanco giving chase. The final hail of bullets were to the top of Marrero&#8217;s head.The murder weapon was never recovered and there was no DNA or blood evidence that tied Mora-Polanco to the shooting, witnesses said.Witness testimonyMora-Polanco took the witness stand Friday and claimed he was at a convenience store on Alter Street and later at Lehigh Valley Hospital at the time of the shooting. He claimed he went to the store to buy cigarettes for his mom and had his then-girlfriend drive him to the hospital for chest pains.Mora-Polanco claimed he was innocent and the witnesses that identified him as the shooter were liars.But Zola, who prosecuted the case along with assistant district attorneys Rachael Pugh and Justin Richards, played surveillance footage from the store that showed Mora-Polanco was nowhere near the cash register in the five minutes he was inside. He noted a doctor testified Mora-Polanco showed &#8220;no symptoms&#8221; at the hospital and was placed in a room a few doors down from where Marrero was declared dead.In his closing, defense attorney Frank McCabe challenged the testimony of the four key witnesses who he said at the onset of the trial failed to immediately come forward and would offer inconsistent stories to the jury. The witnesses, he reiterated Monday, were heavy drug users whose &#8220;statements and stories contradict each other.&#8221;&#8220;Four women allegedly see a shooting and nobody says anything,&#8221; McCabe said. &#8220;What sense does that make? If drugs don&#8217;t affect you then what&#8217;s the cause? It&#8217;s because they&#8217;re inconsistent. They can&#8217;t even get their stories straight.&#8221;Joline Shafer, who said she was high on crack cocaine and heroin the night of the shooting, had claimed her drug addiction had no effect on her ability to perceive events. If jurors believed that, McCabe said, they didn&#8217;t look at her when she was on the witness stand.&#8220;She was a ghastly figure,&#8221; he said of the 21-year-old, &#8220;and it&#8217;s sad.&#8221;Zola argued the eyewitnesses &#8220;were living their lives much differently than the way we live our lives.&#8221;After the verdict, Zola said he felt confident their testimony would be corroborated by the video evidence.&#8220;We had to make sure we found a jury that could set (their drug use) aside and judge their credibility equally like they would any other witness and obviously we found the right jury,&#8221; Zola said. &#8220;They were able to set that aside and decide this case on the facts, not on the backgrounds of the witnesses.&#8221;McCabe said Mora-Polanco will appeal.<style>
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<div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/web1_Rafael-Mora-Polanco-6-14-15-cmyk-17.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Mora-Polanco </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/web1_Rafael-Mora-Polanco-6-14-15-cmyk-17.jpg</photo0><caption0>Mora-Polanco </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><subheadMeta>Judge: &#8216;Another example of drugs ruining life after life&#8217;</subheadMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta>By Joe Dolinskyjdolinsky@www.timesleader.com</bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta>Reach Joe Dolinsky at 570-991-6110 or on Twitter @JoeDolinskyTL.</shirttailMeta></div>

Rafael Mora-Polanco gets life in prison for Hazleton homicide