Enrique Marquez Jr. wants his guilty pleas in San Bernardino terror attack tossed; prosecutors object

Riverside resident Enrique Marquez Jr. said he was feeling suicidal, hopeless, depressed and even catatonic around the time he pleaded guilty to purchasing the AR-style rifles used by two terrorists to kill 14 people and wound 22 others in the 2015 terrorist attack in San Bernardino, it was revealed in court on Thursday, Jan. 30.

But Marquez in February 2017 had convinced U.S. District Court Judge Jesus G. Bernal that he was mentally fit to enter the pleas that could result in a 25 years-to-life sentence and understood the consequences of his actions.

On Thursday, he was in court to try to withdraw his pleas to providing material support to a terrorist and making false statements on a federal firearms purchase form.

Prosecutors countered the claims made in Marquez’s motion to withdraw the pleas by presenting evidence showing that instead of being suicidal, he’d told people that he was doing well in jail and hopeful for his future.

“That’s as opposite as you can get. Both can’t be true,” said psychiatrist Saul Faerstein, who conducted a four-hour interview with Marquez and reviewed other doctors’ reports before testifying for the prosecution.

Marquez, 28, appeared in court in a white jumpsuit. He was not restrained, though a U.S. Marshal sat behind him at all times. Marquez did not speak.

Thursday’s testimony and presentation of evidence pulled back the curtain on motions piled upon motions that had been filed since Marquez’s pleas but whose contents had been kept secret from the public.

Prosecutors on Thursday urged Bernal to unseal the documents because it was in the public’s interest to know the background when Bernal makes his ruling. Defense attorney John Aquilina on Thursday opposed the unsealing.

Marquez’s motion to withdraw came after a different doctor first examined him. That report, with Marquez’s claim of intellectual instability, was submitted to the court.

Faerstein, under cross-examination by Aquilina, said Marquez’s pleas were rational but that Marquez had made contradictory statements to the FBI and to doctors. Faerstein said that led him to believe that Marquez’s statements may not be credible.

Those contradictions included Marquez’s accounts of chat room activity, whether there were firm plans to wage attacks on 91 Freeway motorists and Riverside City College campus, and whether Marquez built an explosive device.

Marquez said in his declaration that an increase in his dosage of lithium — which stabilizes moods — and adding Prozac to his prescriptions in February 2018 changed his mental health condition.

“For the first time in my life, as a result of the changes, I began to feel less anxious and depressed,” he said in his doctor’s report.

The prosecution brought in Faerstein to counter that claim.

Prosecutor Julius Nam displayed letters Marquez had written to a friend around the time of his pleas.

“I’m also a tutor,” Marquez wrote. “I never realized how difficult it was to teach others general ed stuff. … I became a de facto teacher/editor of the unit,” helping inmates understand how to work the computers.

In another communication, Marquez wrote that he was hopeful that a college degree program in mechanical engineering would be offered. That letter was not a sign of a man who was suicidal and hopeless, Faerstein testified.

Faerstein also testified that he had diagnosed Marquez as having bipolar disorder 2, which is characterized by cyclical mood swings: some good days and some bad days. Ultimately, the psychiatrist told Nam, Marquez at the time of his pleas was mentally competent to make them.

Also on Thursday, Aquilina said the government was wrong in claiming the rifles Marquez purchased were in preparation for two earlier terror attacks that were aborted. Aquilina said the attacks were discussed after, not before, he bought the guns.

Prosecutors said Marquez bought the guns in November 2011 and February 2012 for an attack on the Riverside City College campus and the 91 Freeway by him and Syed Rizwan Farook. But discussions about the twin attacks were after that, in summer 2012, Aquilina said.

Marquez told FBI agents that Farook wanted him to buy the guns because he believed it would deflect suspicion that might be raised if a Middle Eastern-looking man bought them.

During the hearing, a third abandoned attack was mentioned — apparently for the first time — on a Veterans Administration hospital. There was no immediate additional information on that plan. Both men lived in Riverside at the time they were discussing the unrealized attacks, and the nearest VA hospital to them would have been in Loma Linda.

Prosecutors have said Marquez was unaware of plans by former Riverside neighbor Farook and Farook’s wife, Tashfeen Malik, to commit the massacre at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino. Farook and Malik used the rifles on Farook’s co-workers from the San Bernardino County Division of Environmental Health during a combined training session and holiday party. One of the victims who died worked at the IRC.

The Redlands couple who carried out the attack died the same day in a shootout with law enforcement.

The friendship between Marquez and Farook was complicated. Though Farook had radicalized Marquez, Faerstein said Thursday that Marquez told him “Farook was getting too preachy, and that it was exhausting.” Their friendship had ended before the San Bernardino attack, and Farestein said that came in late 2012, when Farook physically attacked Marquez.

Some victims of the shooting, and surviving family members of those who were killed, were in the courtroom Thursday.

Testimony is scheduled to resume Friday at 9 a.m.

Staff writer Richard K. De Atley contributed to this report.