Conviction upheld in 1997 killing of Iowa teen

By AMY FORLITI
Associated Press

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The Minnesota Court of Appeals on Monday affirmed the conviction and 44-year sentence of a man found guilty of ordering the brutal 1997 kidnapping and murder of an Iowa teen who owed money for drugs.

A three-judge panel of the appeals court found the Minnesota conviction of Juan Humberto Castillo-Alvarez does not violate his right to be free from double jeopardy, even though he had been convicted in Iowa. His Iowa conviction was reversed and dismissed because he did not get a speedy trial.

"As a sovereign state, Minnesota has a legitimate interest in trying a person alleged to have ordered murder to occur within its boundaries; it would be unjust to allow the errors of another sovereign to prevent Minnesota from doing so here," the judges wrote.

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Gregory "Sky" Erickson, 15, was kidnapped and killed in June 1997 over a drug debt.

He was taken from Spencer, Iowa, and beaten by a group of men who took turns punching and kicking him while he had his hands tied behind his back and a pillow case over his head.

One of the men said Castillo-Alvarez ordered him to kill the teen and leave him in Minnesota. The men put Erickson in the trunk of a car and took him to an abandoned farmhouse in Jackson County, where he was shot twice with a gun provided by Castillo-Alvarez, according to court documents. The next day, two men went back to the farmhouse to burn it, and Erickson's partly burned body was found a week later.

Castillo-Alvarez fled to Mexico. He was eventually extradited and convicted in Iowa in 2007. But the Iowa Court of Appeals reversed his conviction in 2009, saying prosecutors violated his speedy trial rights.

Minnesota prosecutors charged him in 2010 with aiding and abetting second-degree murder and aiding and abetting kidnapping. He was convicted in January 2011.

Double jeopardy protects a person from being prosecuted twice for the same crime after an acquittal or a conviction.

Castillo-Alvarez's attorneys argued that Minnesota prosecutors violated his right to be free from double jeopardy because they prosecuted him for the same offense after he was convicted in Iowa. But the district court found that because his Iowa conviction was reversed and the case dismissed, the conviction was null and would not bar prosecution in Minnesota.

The appeals court agreed, and found that double jeopardy bars a retrial if a case has been reversed because of insufficient evidence, but not because of a trial error.

Castillo-Alvarez's attorney, Benjamin Butler, declined comment.

Six other people have been convicted for their roles in Erickson's kidnapping and death.