By T. D. Thornton
Trainer Murray Rojas spent nearly a decade fighting equine drug misbranding charges stemming from a years-long federal investigation of horsemen and veterinarians at Penn National Race Course. While other similarly indicted co-defendants opted for plea-bargain deals, Rojas maintained her innocence even through an ordeal that she said “wrecked” her career. In 2021 she took her case all the way to the United States Supreme Court, where her perseverance resulted in the overturning of a 27-month prison sentence and the vacating of all charges against her.
Rojas has since regained her previously revoked licensure to train Thoroughbreds in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia and Arizona. On Tuesday, she wanted to add Kentucky to the list of states where she can legally ply her trade.
But after facing an intense round of questioning and testimony via videoconference by the Kentucky Horse Racing and Gaming Corporation (KHRGC)'s license review committee, Rojas instead ended up withdrawing her request for a Kentucky training license.
Rojas made that decision after the chair of that committee, Gregory Harbut, told her after the board emerged from closed-session deliberations that if she didn't choose to withdraw her license request, the committee's vote would “almost certainly result in the denial of this application.”
Rojas didn't participate in the Dec. 4 hearing accompanied by an attorney. But she did understand the legal ramifications that were explained to her–namely, that if the KHRGC put a license denial on her record, it would jeopardize Rojas's ability to continue training in other states that had already granted her licenses.
“I don't want a denial on my record,” Rojas said.
But, Rojas added, “I would like to reapply with my lawyer next to me to do this. Because, obviously, I didn't answer right, and I'm not really sure why you would prove me guilty when I'm not guilty of anything.”
Earlier in Tuesday's hearing, Rojas had expressed frustration at the license review board's line of questioning, which had included numerous repetitive queries, such as, “Why do you think you are here today?” “Tell us why you're here.” “What brings us to this process?”
(The occasional poor quality of the livestream audio and the wide-angle placement of the camera in a conference room made it difficult for TDN to ascertain at times exactly which KHRGC license review committee members were speaking. Beyond chair Harbut, the other members on Tuesday were Paul Brooker, Michael Dudgeon, Jamie Eads and Shannon Garner).
At one point, Rojas was admonished by a committee member, “It's important that you answer the questions that we ask truthfully.”
Rojas was also reminded several times that, “This is not a criminal procedure, so you don't have to worry about double jeopardy.”
But, Rojas said, that's exactly how she felt, stating to the committee with exasperation, “You're trying to convict me again.”
In July 2017, Rojas was found guilty on 14 of 21 counts of misbranding prescription drugs, charges that were brought against her as part of a Federal Bureau of Investigation inquiry into alleged equine drug administration at Penn National. She was found not guilty on seven counts of wire fraud.
As the Paulick Report wrote in a 2022 chronology of her case, “Rojas was accused of having veterinarians administer medications to horses within 24 hours of a race in violation of state regulations. Veterinarians who testified in the case say they also falsified dates of the treatments in records submitted to regulators. The practice, according to testimony given during the trial, was widespread at Penn National.”
Sentenced to 27 months in federal prison, Rojas initially lost on appeal.
But Rojas petitioned the Supreme Court to hear the case, where, according to the Paulick Report, her legal team argued that “the trial judge and appellate court erred in their definition of misbranding in both jury instructions and in the appeal. Specifically, they said, the judge failed to instruct the jury properly on the distinction between 'administering' drugs and 'dispensing' them and that the government failed to prove that Rojas 'dispensed' the drugs to her horses.”
At the Dec. 4, 2024 hearing for her Kentucky license, Rojas told committee members, “I don't really know what to say other than all my charges were dropped by the Supreme Court. They overturned the federal government on all the charges [and] I've raced [as a licensed trainer since 2023 in other states] without a problem.”
Rojas told the committee members that the conviction “totally wrecked my career. It wrecked my business. It broke me, obviously, paying lawyer's fees. I had the National Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association backing me. They paid half my fees, because it was such a fake charge. I had the Cato Institute backing me with the Supreme Court. I've been backed by great people that know that I am innocent, so I feel like I shouldn't have to fight for this anymore.”
One license review committee member reminded Rojas that that her co-defendants had either all pleaded guilty or were proven guilty at trials. “I'd like you to tell us what you did. It's a pretty serious deal,” the committee member said.
“It was really a serious deal in my life,” Rojas agreed. “I spent nine years fighting for my rights. I didn't take a 'deal.' All the other trainers took a guilty plea. I did not. I didn't do anything wrong. I'm not going to say I did anything wrong, because I didn't. What I was convicted on was misbranding, which was a completely false charge [because I was following the advice of] a veterinarian. I've used no illegal drugs, at all, ever.”
“Then why did they convict you?” asked a committee member.
“They convicted me because they didn't understand the charges,” Rojas responded.
“Misbranding is such a far-fetched idea that [the jury] had no idea what it meant. It was a 14-day trial,” Rojas continued. “The jurors were falling asleep. The judge fell asleep. It was a crazy trial.”
During Tuesday's hearing, two other individuals were also seeking to be relicensed by the KHRGC after various sanctions had been imposed against them.
The committee took testimony for nearly an hour total to cover all three cases, then deliberated in private for about 45 minutes before returning to a public session to vote on the applications.
Only in Rojas's case did the board suggest the withdrawal of the application.
The KHRGC committee voted unanimously to approve licenses for Cody Axmaker and Troy Wismer.
In 2022, Monmouth Park stewards had penalized Axmaker with a two-year suspension and a $5,000 fine after one of his horses died from an accidental overdose of clenbuterol from an apparently mislabeled container.
Wismer, according to testimony at the hearing and from online Kentucky court records, had been convicted this past May of seven felony charges (strangulation, assault, domestic violence, violation of a protective order, burglary, robbery and evading police) stemming from his role in a 2023 altercation at Churchill Downs on GI Kentucky Derby Day and a series of related violent incidents that spilled over to the home of his ex-wife.
Wismer told the KHRGC on Tuesday that he had pleaded guilty to the charges on the advice of his attorney so he could enter a court-approved diversion program that spared him most of the jail time. His relicensing was made conditional upon drug and alcohol screenings.
Within minutes of the adjournment of the license review committee hearing, the KHRGC removed the two public-session videos of Tuesday's proceedings from the organization's YouTube channel.
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