Judge Kenneth Hoyt of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas dismissed the FCPA indictment against Ramon Alexandro Rovirosa Martinez today and ordered him released from federal prison, where he’d been held since December 2025 following a jury conviction.
The acquittal turns on the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause. The government’s case rested almost entirely on Spanish-to-English translations of co-conspirator text messages. Prosecutors never called the translators as witnesses, denying Rovirosa any chance to cross-examine them before or during trial. Under Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004), Hoyt ruled those translated messages are testimonial and can’t come in without that opportunity.
The discovery failures compounded the constitutional violations. DOJ attorney Bennett Starnes promised forensic copies of the Spanish source messages on September 26 and October 1, 2025. The materials never arrived. Hoyt called that failing “fatal to the government’s case.” During deliberations, the jury itself asked for the Spanish originals, which were never entered into evidence because the government had never produced them.
Prosecutors had alleged Rovirosa held “ties to Mexican cartel members” in a day-one filing and press release, but brought no cartel charges and introduced no cartel evidence at trial. Hoyt found the prosecution intentionally withheld evidence and violated Rovirosa’s constitutional rights throughout.
This is only the fourth time since the FCPA’s enactment in 1977 that a U.S. district court has granted post-trial relief of this kind in an FCPA case, per defense counsel at R. McConnell Group PLLC.
Double jeopardy bars any appeal or re-prosecution. Rovirosa was scheduled for sentencing later this month. He walked out of custody instead.
— James Okafor