The First Sentencing Court of Santa Tecla convicted four people, three men and a woman, of possession and holding of drugs in two separate cases.[1] Óscar Alberto Gómez Hueso, Miguel Antonio Mancía Melgar and María Argelia Guevara Torres were detained on 2 May 2025 during a preventive patrol in the district of Teotepeque, La Libertad Costa.[1] Officers searched the three after considering their behaviour suspicious and seized portions of plant material that chemical analysis confirmed as marijuana.[1] Gómez Hueso and Mancía Melgar were found with five grams of marijuana each, and Guevara Torres with eight grams.[1]
The court found the three responsible for possession and holding of marijuana and sentenced each to three years in prison.[1] The two men must serve their sentences in a penitentiary because they have other judicial processes pending.[1] Guevara Torres instead received a conditional suspension of her three-year sentence.[1] During that period she must live at the same address, refrain from using drugs, stay in the country and submit to the control of the sentence-enforcement supervision court.[1]
The second case concerned Francisco Barillas Canizalez, an elderly man arrested on 9 December 2025 in Quezaltepeque, La Libertad Norte.[1] Police who stopped him found 12 grams of marijuana divided into eight portions.[1] At the public hearing he admitted the drug was his, which the court took into account in reaching its verdict.[1] The court found him guilty of possession and holding of drugs and imposed three years in prison, replaced by rules of conduct.[1] His rules of conduct run for three years and ban drug and alcohol use and visits to places where illicit substances are sold.[1]
Article 34 of the Ley Reguladora de las Actividades Relativas a las Drogas sets three to six years in prison for holding two grams or more of an illicit drug.[1]
