McALLEN — McAllen defense attorney Eric Jarvis has been sentenced to federal prison for his role in aiding a drug trafficking organization by improperly providing its members with federal court records.
U.S. District Judge Ricardo H. Hinojosa handed down the sentence during a lengthy hearing at the McAllen federal courthouse Tuesday afternoon. Jarvis will serve 45 months in federal prison, to be followed by a 15-month period of home confinement, and two years under supervised release, Hinojosa ordered.
“Mr. Jarvis, I’m sorry that you put yourself into this situation,” Hinojosa said at the conclusion of the hearing.
Hinojosa further ordered that Jarvis surrender to U.S. Marshals within 30 days, though the disgraced attorney asked to delay his surrender until after the graduation ceremony of one of his children next month
Jarvis declined to comment as he left the federal courthouse, but his attorney, Carlos A. Garcia, said he was disappointed in the outcome.
“I’m obviously disappointed with the court’s sentence in this case,” Garcia said via phone. “No one wants to be judged for what is arguably the worst part of their life, but obviously for the balance of his life.”
Garcia explained that Jarvis pleaded guilty in order to mitigate the potential for a longer sentence since a practice known as “cross referencing” can call for longer sentence recommendations under the federal sentencing guidelines.
In Jarvis’ case, cross referencing meant he could have faced up to two decades in prison.
“In my opinion, I feel like the sentence is too severe. I don’t believe that it matched what it is that he pled to,” Garcia said.
“I respect the court’s position, and what he (Hinojosa) has to do, but I don’t agree,” he added, saying the sentence amounted to a “trophy” for federal prosecutors.
Taken together, the 45-month prison term, followed by 15-months’ home confinement, represent the maximum amount of time Jarvis could have been sentenced to.
In court, prosecutors laid out their allegations against Jarvis, saying the man used his position as an attorney to not only look up court records at the behest of the so-called “Herrera Drug Trafficking Organization” or “Herrera DTO,” but also that he instructed its drug runners to mislead law enforcement.
“Mr. Jarvis either told them to falsify information” or not to cooperate with investigators, Assistant U.S. Attorney Roberto “Bobby” Lopez Jr. said.
Lopez was speaking of one instance in particular, when Jarvis visited a person being held at the Hidalgo County jail, though he never filed a notice of appearance as an attorney for that person.
Instead, just a few hours after Jarvis’ visit with the prisoner, another attorney, Lennard K. Whittaker, paid a visit to the same person. Whittaker is on record as that person’s defense attorney.
Though claiming no recollection of the instance, Jarvis insisted the visit must have been a routine attempt to retain the person as his client.
Prosecutors believe the visit was meant to persuade the prisoner to not cooperate with investigators.
By contrast, Garcia said Jarvis had only been giving the type of advice any defense attorney would give: to not speak with law enforcement until advised by an attorney.
But Jarvis did more than visit prisoners associated with the Herrera DTO, Lopez said.
For nearly four years, the lawyer also used his access to PACER, the publicly accessible repository of federal court records, to supply the organization with information regarding law enforcement activities.
According to charging documents, Jarvis participated in the scheme from July 2017 through mid-May 2021. He pleaded guilty just two months later.
“You have anonymous calls being made… and within hours, Mr. Jarvis is searching for that name,” Lopez said in court Tuesday.
Jarvis would search the PACER database to confirm whether certain people were in custody — whether or not they were his clients. The Herrera DTO would subsequently pay him for his efforts.
In all, Jarvis admitted to eight instances of conveying information to the organization’s leader, Angel Herrera, though the government said they had “uncovered” more than 40 instances.
Herrera was later killed, but even his death did not deter Jarvis from selling information to the organization.
“If… learning that one of these drug traffickers was very brutally murdered doesn’t stop you… (it) goes to show how far Mr. Jarvis was in this organization,” Lopez said.
Despite admitting that he understood his relaying of information to the organization involved money laundering and drug trafficking, Jarvis denied being a part of the Herrera DTO itself.
Garcia asked for leniency for his client. Asking Hinojosa to take into account that the majority of the defendants related to Jarvis’ improper communications had been sentenced to less time than the 60-month maximum sentence Jarvis was facing.
Garcia pointed to the strong support network the disgraced attorney has, including a number of family members who were in the courtroom Tuesday, as well as the many people who wrote letters of support for Jarvis.
Jarvis himself was contrite, saying the ordeal had caused him to focus inward.
“I cannot describe… the inexpressible horror I have been suffering… that my family has been experiencing,” Jarvis said at the beginning of the sentencing hearing.
“(I’m) grateful to the Lord for his divine chastening…” he continued, before Hinojosa interrupted him.
“Isn’t it true there’s the belief — for those who believe — that human beings were given the ability to know right from wrong?” the judge asked Jarvis.
And in the end, it seemed that initial question — along with the public trust inherent with his career as a defense attorney, as well as his robust familial and social support — that seemed to sway the judge in handing down his sentence.
“This is a difficult case, but because of that, and because of the things he does have that others don’t, it puts us in a very difficult situation,” Hinojosa said.
“When it came to the rule of law and the oath that he took as a lawyer, he violated that oath,” the judge added a few moments later.
