Former MS-13 Leader Convicted in '01 Attack on Rival

A former MS-13 leader accused of abducting and attacking a member of a rival Latino gang was convicted of assault charges yesterday in D.C. Superior Court but was acquitted of kidnapping and of assault with intent to kill.

It was the third time Juan Carlos Rivas-Moreiera had been tried in connection with the 2001 attack. The first two trials, both in 2005, ended in hung juries.

The U.S. attorney's office persisted with the case against him, and after 2 1/2 days of deliberation, the jury found Rivas-Moreiera, 25, guilty of assault with a dangerous weapon, aggravated assault while armed and threats.

Rivas-Moreiera, of Silver Spring, is among the members of MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, who were indicted in a racketeering case over the summer in federal court in Maryland. The case alleges that the gang members were involved in murder, kidnapping, robbery and other criminal acts.

Elgar Hernandez, a member of the rival Mara R gang, was stabbed in the heart in the May 2001 attack, which was the culmination of a months-long feud that began over a woman.

According to the case presented by the prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Gilberto Guerrero Jr., Rivas-Moreiera had taken up with the girlfriend of a Mara R member, Roque Elias Lopez-Gonzalez. The woman had recently given birth to Lopez-Gonzalez's child.

In October 2000, Lopez-Gonzalez attacked Rivas-Moreiera in Silver Spring, but he was quickly outnumbered, prosecutors said. On May 19, 2001, Rivas-Moreiera and two fellow MS-13 members struck back at Mara R by targeting Hernandez, prosecutors said.

Picked up near 14th Street NW and Florida Avenue, Hernandez was stabbed in his assailants' car before escaping near Piney Branch Parkway NW.

Shown a book of area gang members nine days later, Hernandez picked out Rivas-Moreiera, whom he knew only by his nickname, Stokey. But it was not until April 2004 that Rivas-Moreiera was charged in the attack. At the time, he was in the custody of Montgomery County on unrelated charges.

Last June, he went on trial in D.C. Superior Court in connection with the attack on Hernandez, but the jury deadlocked. In September, the case was retried with the same outcome.

The third trial got underway this month, and the jury returned its verdict yesterday morning.

Judge Hiram E. Puig-Lugo scheduled Rivas-Moreiera's sentencing for April 27.

Under the District's sentencing guidelines, he is likely to face a term of five to 16 years.