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LA woman paroled in deadly fire deported to Mexico

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By RAQUEL MARIA DILLON
Associated Press Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A clothing store owner who spent 23 years behind bars for a deadly arson fire after proclaiming her innocence was paroled from state prison and deported to Mexico on Thursday.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said Maria Rosa "Rosie" Sanchez was released from the state California Institution for Women in Chino and deported by immigration authorities at the San Ysidro border crossing.

ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice said Sanchez is a convicted felon with no lawful status in the U.S.

"She was made aware of her rights and the process was explained to her," Kice said. She declined to describe Sanchez's response.

Sanchez, who owned a small clothing store, said she was at home when another store in the same building went up in flames in December 1985. A man died in the fire, and Sanchez was convicted of first-degree murder and arson. In 1987, she was sentenced to 25 years to life.

She always maintained her innocence. With the help of a law clinic for women at the University of Southern California Law School, she got the state parole board to recommend her release.

Sanchez met with Mexican consular officials after she was processed by immigration officials, Kice said.

The USC law students who helped Sanchez win parole are preparing to ask Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to pardon Sanchez so she can visit with her adult children, who waited for years to bring their mother home.

Last week, prison officials told Sanchez she would be released to her daughter, also named Rosie Sanchez, who lives in Anaheim, said her son, Gustavo Sanchez.

His sister bought furniture, fixed up a room for their mother to live in and prepared her young children to welcome their grandmother, he said.

"She's pretty upset because she keeps looking at that empty room. She's been sleeping in there since we found out," that their mother would be deported instead of released, Gustavo said, as he prepared to leave for Tijuana to meet his mother.

Sanchez was picked up by her sister at the border, and she will live with her in Mexicali, her son said.

Jennifer Farrell, a second year law student at USC who represented Sanchez at her parole hearing, said the whole family got their hopes up when the prison said she could stay in the U.S. and live with her daughter, but Sanchez had told the parole board she would go to Mexicali.

"It was the best strategy before the parole board, but partly I think that after 23 years of wrongful incarceration, she was just fed up with the American dream," Farrell said.

Sanchez said she had been approved for a green card and would have received it if she hadn't been arrested, said USC Law professor Michael Brennan said. She was deported primarily because as a convicted felon without U.S. citizenship she's not allowed to travel or live in the U.S.

Farrell said that Sanchez's public defender was ineffective during the 1987 trial and the sole witness who placed her at the scene was unreliable. Farrell also said Sanchez didn't have a financial motive as prosecutors had claimed.

The prosecution relied on an 18-year-old witness, Adan Ramos, who said he saw Sanchez and another woman while he was trapped in the burning building, she said. Ramos' father, Epiphanio, was sleeping in the store and died in the blaze.

Attempts by The Associated Press to find telephone numbers to reach the Ramos family were not successful Thursday. The Los Angeles County district attorney's office had no family contact information for the 25-year-old case and Sanchez's public defender during the trial has died.

"I'm glad I'll get to see her but it's temporary," he said. "I guess like everyone else we have to travel to see our mom and for her to see her grandkids."

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