Meth distributor gets 10 years in prison

A Chula Vista woman who was described as the ringleader of a major methamphetamine distribution operation was sentenced recently to 10 years in federal prison.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jose Castillo sought nearly 25 years in prison for Julie Muriel Peterson, 40, and her attorney, Mark Adams, asked U.S. District Court Judge William Hayes to impose an even 100-month sentence.

Adams said Peterson accepted criminal responsibility early by pleading guilty to conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine just six months after her arrest in 2011. Peterson has spent the last 45 months in jail and will get that credited against her sentence.

Peterson has a 15-year-old child who wrote a letter to the judge asking that she get a lesser sentence. She is the last person among 24 indicted in 2011 to be sentenced with the exception of the remaining lone fugitive, Miguel Angel Sandoval, who would be 38 years old now.

Peterson wrote a letter to Hayes in January on behalf of her brother, Jose Marino Garcia Jr., now 30, and from Chula Vista.

She said his participation “was all at my direction” and he “did not have any independent decision making authority beyond following my instructions relative to the delivery of methamphetamine to my customers.”

Hayes sentenced Garcia to 57 months on Jan. 14, though the prosecutor sought 168 months. Both Peterson and Garcia forfeited all assets to the U.S. government that was connected to the house at 396 Inkopah St. in Chula Vista where meth packaging was believed to have occurred.

Several others got larger sentences than Peterson, such as the 20-year term Robert Cota Jr., 51, of Chula Vista received in May. But Cota went to trial and was convicted of conspiracy to distribute meth and he had a prior drug manufacturing conviction which got him a seven-year prison term in 1997, according to court records.

The judge read a favorable letter for Peterson from the food services director in the detention facility where Peterson has worked for several years. Under the plea agreement, Peterson could have received a life sentence.