Sentenced to College - Chapter 8

The opening arguments

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In July 1999, just after Angel had been convicted of parole violations for smoking marijuana on three separate occasions, he found himself back in the Kandiyohi County Jail where Judge Spilseth had sentenced him to 45 days. By revoking the stay of imposition on Angel’s earlier case of “receiving stolen property/firearms,” the court now recognized Angel as a convicted felon. The good news was—for the time being anyway—the stay of execution on that case was still in place, meaning that the judge had chosen not to execute the full sentence of one year and one day in prison, but instead had imposed a lesser sentence of 45 days in the county jail, with credit for time served and good behavior.

Back at home, Angel’s mother was in a full panic. Angel’s lawyer, Kent Marshall, may have been a brilliant criminal lawyer, but she had no way of knowing it because she couldn’t understand English. All she knew for sure was that Manuel Guerrero from St. Paul had helped her family in the past. He was smart, fair, generous, and bilingual. She was aware that Manuel had refused to represent Angel anymore because of his ongoing association with the Latin Kings, but her son was now facing up to 2 ½ years in prison and Maria Hernandez was desperate. She drove the 100+ miles to meet with Manuel Guerrero at his office in St. Paul and begged him to reconsider.

At that time, Manuel Guerrero was in his final year of teaching law classes at the University of Minnesota and leading the Chicano Latin Studies Department. It would be a transition year for him, and in 2000 he planed to retire from the U to practice criminal law part time, mostly representing Latino people in outstate Minnesota where he felt they weren’t being served adequately.