A Sierra Vista man arrested last Friday continues to sit in the Cochise County jail while a judge decides whether the filing of criminal charges involving sexual exploitation of children is grounds to revoke a five-year term of probation the man began serving last year in a DUI case.
Leandro Guillen is slated to be back in court May 19 in connection to three active cases, including his prior DUI conviction, a new DUI case, and several Class 2 felonies involving sexual exploitation of a minor through the production of recordings of illicit sexual activity and sexual exploitation of a minor for possessing the recordings, commonly referred to as child pornography.
A judge has set Guillen’s pre-trial bail for the sex crimes at $100,000 and $5,000 for the new DUI, but those are currently overridden by a no-bail order issued in Guillen’s 2019 probation case.
Court records show this is not the first time Guillen, 53, has been investigated for sex crimes involving a minor. And at least one family later tried to get to the Arizona Attorney General’s Office to look into Guillen after he was approved by a Cochise County judge in 2007 to serve as legal guardian of another youth.
Arizona Daily Independent has learned the Cochise County Attorney’s Office presented testimony from a Sierra Vista detective to a grand jury in October 2004 about a report that Guillen had sexually assaulted a teenaged boy earlier that month. Guillen was also accused of furnishing alcohol to the minor.
All 12 grand jurors voted to indict Guillen on one count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor for the alcohol. However, 10 of the 12 found insufficient evidence to bring forth a True Bill for the sex charges, one of which was a Class 2 felony. Two months later the Cochise County Attorney’s Office dismissed the alcohol charge, which was only a Class 1 misdemeanor.
Then in 2007, a relative of a local teen wrote to then-Attorney General Terry Goddard about concerns with the background check conducted on Guillen before he was awarded guardianship of a 16-year-old boy. Records in that case are not readily available although the teen reportedly lived in Guillen’s home for several months.
A DUI citation in early 2015 led to a warrant for Guillen’s arrest that was not executed until November 2017. That case was eventually resolved by a plea deal, but not before Guillen was identified as a suspect in another 2015 DUI.
Guillen was not formally charged in the second 2015 DUI until 2019. He later pleaded guilty to Extreme DUI (.15 to .19 BAC) and was sentenced to 120 days in county jail with 60 days suspended. The DUI sentence also included a five-year term of supervised probation which began in February 2020.
Earlier this month the probation department filed a petition to revoke Guillen’s probation after he was charged in Sierra Vista Justice Court with Aggravated DUI.
Then on May 7, Guillen was arrested after detectives received information from “a credible source” about the exploitation of a minor.
With a court-authorized search warrant in hand, Sierra Vista Det. John Andela and several officers went through Guillen’s home where they seized “numerous recordings of juveniles in various stages of undress,” according to a city press release. “These recordings gave detectives probable cause to arrest Guillen on Friday.”
Anyone with information concerning Guillen’s activities is asked to contact Det. John Andela at 520-452-7500.