Woman pleads guilty in deadly smuggling case

SEATTLE- A second Chinese citizen has pleaded guilty in a human smuggling attempt in which three people died and 15 were found in poor health in a cargo container.

Jin Ma, 28, a resident alien who most recently lived in Flushing, N.Y., pleaded guilty Monday in U.S. District Court to conspiracy to smuggle aliens.

On Thursday one of her two co-defendants, Kam Hung Chan, 39, also changed his plea to guilty. The trial of a third, Chao Kang Lin, 29, is set for December.

Ma could face a life prison term, but government lawyers agreed to propose a lesser sentence in exchange for her guilty plea.

Thirst and starvation was blamed for the death of three of the 18 stowaways who were found on Jan. 14 in a 40-foot shipping container aboard the newly arrived NYK Cape May. One of the survivors died later in New York of voyage-related causes.

Orchard workers paid at last: Wages totaling nearly $374,000 have been paid to more than 600 field hands who worked in orchards owned by a Tieton farmer, the U.S. Department of Labor said Tuesday. The workers were paid under a court order that allowed farmer Jerrie Vanderhouwen to harvest and sell cherries and apples this year while ensuring that his employees would get the money owed them. Vanderhouwen could not immediately be reached for comment. The Labor Department got involved in the case after it received complaints from workers about not getting paid, some for several months, said Jerry Hall, an agency spokesman in San Francisco.

Assisted suicide law: Sen. Ron Wyden wrote President Bush on Tuesday, urging him not to alter Oregon’s first-in-the-nation physician assisted suicide law. Wyden, D-Ore., said that he was hearing rumors from “a number of federal agency and other sources” that Bush’s political appointees are considering actions that would effectively overturn Oregon’s voter-approved Death with Dignity Act. White House spokesman Ken Lisaius referred inquiries to the Justice Department, which did not return calls seeking comment. In 1998, then-Attorney General Janet Reno agitated assisted suicide opponents by deciding that federal drug agents cannot take action against doctors who prescribe lethal doses of federally controlled substances under Oregon’s law. The issue stemmed from a debate about whether the federal government, under the Controlled Substances Act, could stop Oregon doctors.

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