A former Bronx high school dean who federal prosecutors say led a double life as a drug kingpin will be allowed to withdraw his guilty plea and go to trial, a federal judge has decided.
Judge Jed Rakoff said in his order that there is a chance that Israel Garcia pleaded guilty under pressure from his defense attorney and because he was told he would end up with a life sentence if he fought the case.
As The Daily Beast reported in December, Garcia—with the support of his family and former students—has been battling to retract his plea to what federal prosecutors called a “decade-long narcotics conspiracy” while behind bars.
He was so shocked when he got the news of Rakoff’s decision by phone that he had to hang up the call and go back to his cell, said his girlfriend, Hilary Hernandez.
“He just had to take a moment to process it because he didn’t know which way it would go,” she said.
Garcia’s first court-appointed lawyer, Raoul Zaltzberg, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The educator, portrayed by prosecutors as the Masarati-driving “Big Gun of the GMG YGz” gang, has never denied he was once in a gang, his family told The Daily Beast last month. But, they said, he had turned his life around, working at the post office and eventually as a dean on his old high school campus.
Garcia, his supporters say, used his past to inspire the youth he worked with as dean for New Visions Charter School for the Humanities I and II.
But when he was arrested last year, federal authorities said that his jobs were just a cover for something more sinister: his alleged role as leader of a dangerous gang, and directing drug sales on his old block.
Garcia pleaded guilty to narcotics conspiracy in March 2022 but tried to back out weeks later. Soon thereafter, Zaltzberg submitted a detailed memo avidly disputing Garcia’s claims, saying his client knew what he was doing when he copped the plea.
Rakoff allowed Garcia to switch lawyers but initially shot down the plea-change request. But in September, a recording surfaced which allegedly documented a conversation in which Zaltzberg told Garcia and Hernandez that if he went to trial, he would never see his daughter again.
Rakoff, who reportedly excoriated Garcia at a hearing on the plea switch, wrote that he does not take his claims of innocence at his word, but the corroborating recording and Garcia’s “bare-bones” plea under oath were enough to sway him.
“There is, therefore, a material risk that Mr. Garcia pled guilty, not because he wished to plead guilty, but rather because he feared the consequences of a conviction as represented by his lawyer,” wrote Rakoff.
The judge echoed Hernandez’s frustration with the pressures on defendants to plea, noting “growing evidence that innocent persons frequently face pressure to plead guilty because of the harsh penalties they face if they go to trial and are convicted.”
Garcia’s new lawyer plans to seek a trial date on Tuesday.
“It’s the start to another fight,” Hernandez said.
A spokesperson from the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York declined comment for this story.
