Former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández was sentenced to 45 years in prison for drug trafficking by a New York judge on Wednesday. Hernández, 55, was president of Honduras for two terms from 2014 to 2022, during which he was considered a staunch U.S. ally in the war on drugs even after his own links to traffickers became apparent, such as in the 2019 trial of his brother and close political operative Tony.
“For more than a decade, the defendant abused his political power to operate Honduras—a country of roughly ten million people—as a narco-state,” said U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams, in the government’s sentencing submission.
“The defendant engaged in this egregious conduct while publicly posing as an ally of the United States in its efforts to combat the importation of narcotics that destroy countless lives in this country. But behind closed doors, the defendant protected the very traffickers he vowed to pursue,” said Williams, omitting the favorable treatment that the White House gave Hernández during that same period.
In March, a jury found Hernández guilty on drug trafficking conspiracy and two related weapons charges, following a nearly three-week trial that reiterated the well-known symbiotic relationship between drug traffickers and politicians in Honduras. During Wednesday's hearing, he maintained his innocence, citing his cooperation with U.S. authorities and anti-drug policies as proof. His lawyers had requested that he receive a minimum sentence of 40 years.
Hernández reacted to the sentence through an interpreter at his sentencing: “I was wrongly and unjustly accused.” In a lengthy letter addressed to the judge before the Wednesday hearing, he made a similar claim that he has reiterated since his February 2022 extradition: “I have repeatedly told my nation, as well as the entire world: I am innocent, I am the victim of a vendetta and a conspiracy by organized crime groups,” he wrote.
Judge Kevin Castel was not moved, calling Hernández a “two-faced politician hungry for power” who protected certain drug traffickers and had “considerable acting skills.”
Castel also sentenced Hernández to five years of supervised release upon completing his time and fined him $8 million, in all a lower punishment than was expected. Hernández’s younger brother, Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández, was previously convicted of drug trafficking and weapons charges in the same courthouse in October 2019, while Juan Orlando, popularly known as JOH, was still the sitting president of Honduras. Tony Hernández is serving a term of life plus 30 years in prison.
Following the hearing, many in Honduras expressed concern about the length of the former president’s sentence being shorter than that of Tony, as well as pessimism about the possibility that his conviction will reduce the influence of drug money in politics in the country, where leaders of all three major political tents —Libre, the National Party, and the Liberal Party— have been accused in U.S. court documents of taking bribes from drug traffickers.
“One would think that JOH's conviction is going to be a lesson for the Honduran political class, but that’s not the case. We still have politicians who legislate to protect themselves from being tried and in some cases, extradited, and political parties that organize to protect them,” wrote the Honduran lawyer and political analyst Rafa Jerez on X (formerly Twitter).
Members of the governing Libre Party, who rode into power on a wave of discontent with Hernández and a promise to end the “narco-dictatorship,” attempted to capitalize on the news, while Hernández’s conservative National Party released a statement marking distance after years of defending his innocence: “each person is responsible for their own actions. The political parties can’t be, and should not be, judged for the actions of its members or representatives.”
“The people of Honduras deserve leadership that upholds democracy and the rule of law. Juan Orlando Hernández’s leadership was driven by a desire to serve one man: himself, said U.S Representative Norma Torres (D-CA) in a press release. “Today’s sentencing is a critical step in the right direction, but does not undo the years of damage Hernández inflicted on the Honduran people and throughout the region.”
Fall of a Power Broker
Juan Orlando Hernández, popularly known as JOH, began his political career in 1998 as a legislator for the National Party from the rural department of Lempira. Fellow legislators from that time described him as humble and ambitious. In his second term, he rose to the powerful position of secretary of Congress and earned the nickname “Juan Peaje,” or “Juan Tollbooth,” because of the way he allegedly sought to enrich himself through his position.
In June 2009 when a military coup ousted President Manuel Zelaya Rosales of the center-right Liberal Party, Hernández became one of the principal defenders of that action, which had been backed by the National Party and part of the Liberal Party.
Many sympathizers of Zelaya boycotted the general election in November of that year, resulting in the National Party gaining its tightest grip on power since Honduras returned to democracy in 1982. Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo won the presidency and Hernández, his political acolyte, became president of Congress.
Over the next few years, Honduras was the principal landing point for drug planes from South America as well as one of the world’s most violent countries. Hernández campaigned for president in 2013 as a hardliner on crime, touting his role in the passage of a constitutional amendment the year prior that for the first time allowed the extradition of Hondurans – and ultimately would be his own undoing.
During the trial, witnesses testified about millions of dollars in bribes paid to Hernández during that campaign, including $1 million from the notorious former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
In 2017, Hernández sought reelection despite a constitutional prohibition against it. By then, rumors of his brother Tony’s and his own links to drug traffickers were the topic of much debate in Honduras. The 2017 election was marred by violence and allegations of fraud, but Hernández ultimately declared himself the winner and received crucial support from the United States to legitimize his victory.
Even after Hernández’s links to drug traffickers were put on display by U.S. prosecutors during the trial of his brother Tony in October 2019, the then-president remained in good favor with the Trump administration, which was willing to turn a blind eye so long as Honduras bent to the will of the administration’s migration policies. The administration of Joe Biden, however, shunned Hernández.
In February 2022, just weeks after leaving office, Hernández was arrested outside his home, shackled and paraded before the media. Although by then it was expected that he would be indicted in the United States on drug trafficking charges, the sight of the former president in chains was shocking nonetheless; no Honduran president had ever been jailed before despite being —per Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index— consistently ranked as having some of the most corrupt institutions in the Americas.
Crucial Admissions
On February 20, following numerous delays due to issues with his defense, Hernández went to trial in New York. Over roughly three weeks, multiple drug traffickers told the jury about bribes they paid to Hernández in exchange for protection from Honduran law enforcement and other favors. Among the witnesses was Fabio Lobo, the son of former President Pepe Lobo.
Fabio Lobo testified that both Hernández and his father had received bribes from traffickers, underscoring the depths of their infiltration into Honduran politics. In an exclusive jailhouse interview published by El Faro days before testifying, Lobo said that Juan Orlando was “the brains” behind his brother Tony’s criminal activities.
Juan Orlando’s defense called to the witness stand three military officers who had worked with Hernández. But at least one of them did more harm than good, making a crucial admission that he had informed Hernández while he was president of Congress that his brother Tony had ties to drug traffickers. Knowingly protecting his brother is sufficient to be convicted in the United States on drug trafficking conspiracy charges.
Hernández then made the unusual decision to take the stand in his own defense, seeming to believe that he could handle the prosecutor’s interrogation, much like he dealt with reporters throughout his political career. But the former president appeared evasive and told several lies while on the stand that would have been obvious to any Honduran, such as that he did not recall major allegations made against his brother while he was president.
Hernández has vowed to appeal his conviction, claiming that he did not receive a fair trial and that the witnesses lied to reduce their own sentences. “The investigation and trial against me is full of mistakes, of injustices that have become a lynching through the U.S. judicial system. The prosecutors and agents did not do due diligence in the investigation to know the whole TRUTH,” he wrote, using those capital letters, in his letter to the judge.
Many expected that Hernández would receive the same sentence as his brother. But the text in the extradition agreement between Honduras and the United States prohibits that a person who has been extradited receive a life sentence — a punishment that does not exist in Honduran law. Tony Hernández was not extradited, but captured in Miami.
“Appeals are very hard to win in this district,” said Renato Stabile, a lawyer for Hernández, to reporters outside the courthouse after the sentencing.
