MARTINEZ — In a long-shot bid to get out of prison, a Sinaloa Cartel-connected methamphetamine dealer has accused a disgraced ex-police sergeant of framing him, but details of his argument are protected by a judge’s sealing order.

Jose Carlos “Calacas” Vega-Robles asked a judge to grant him a new trial for 2012 convictions on first- and second-degree murder charges, related to the 2004 killings of 29-year-old Marcelino Guzman-Mercado, shot in El Sobrante during a robbery attempt, and Darryl Grockett, an Aryan Brotherhood prison gang member whose bullet-riddled body was discovered along a remote section of road in the Crockett hills.

Vega-Robles’ attorney has filed several motions detailing her argument, but all are protected by a sealing order. Also sealed are an unknown amount of documents related to an internal affairs investigation into former Richmond police Sgt. Mike Wang, who was accused of accepting bribes, outing an informant, and other misconduct. In 2014, police announced Wang had been fired for “several serious policy violations” without elaborating on specifics.

The city of Richmond requested the documents be sealed, but its motions in support of the sealing order were not found in the court file and are presumably also sealed.

Judge Charles “Ben” Burch indicated at a turbulent hearing Friday morning that he will soon issue a ruling, but appeared skeptical of the defense theory. He at one point asked Carmela Caramagno, Vega-Robles’ attorney, if she thought there was a “grand conspiracy” against her client — who was implicated by the testimony of several witnesses — and her response was a forceful “yes.”

“(The prosecution witnesses) were living and sleeping with each other and they all had the discovery for years,” Caramagno said, later adding, “This trial is about the pressure put on informants to give the testimony that they gave.”

But Burch appeared unmoved. When Caramagno said that Wang was connected to several witnesses against her client and that other officers were using the same informants, the judge forcefully shrugged his shoulders and shot back, “So what?”

“You’re not going to get any argument from me that Wang was a corrupt police officer; that seems very well established,” Burch said. “The question is whether or not he did something that could have affected the jury.”

Burch suggested, though, that some of the information that came out in the internal affairs investigation — where Wang testified in his defense — added “more guilt” against Vega-Robles, not the other way around.

“There has been no suggestion that Wang influenced their testimony,” he said.

It is an unimaginably complex case centered on a multi-million dollar drug ring that included Jose Vega-Robles, a high-ranking Sureño gang, his brother Sergio, a cocaine dealer who laundered money to a clothing business and bought safe houses throughout the North Bay suburbs, and Coby Phillips, a co-founder and leader of the Family Affiliated Irish Mafia who was convicted last year of murdering Grockett.

The defendants bought meth and cocaine from members of the infamous Sinaloa Cartel — sometimes 20 to 30 pounds of a time, then redistributed them to lower-level drug dealers, typically other gang associates. It wasn’t long before they caught the ire of state and federal authorities, who indicted them on separate multi-felony dockets in the late 2000s, including murder charges.

In 2012, Sergio Vega-Robles agreed to testify against Phillips in exchange for a favorable plea deal, but the following year he threw a monkey wrench in the case, coming forward with allegations that Wang had accepted $120,000 in bribes from him, outed a police informant who was later non-fatally shot, and helped facilitate drug deals.

But according to court records, the lead investigator and prosecutor in the Grockett homicide — inspector Shawn Pate and senior deputy district attorney Tom Kensok — first became suspicious of Wang years earlier in 2010, when they bumped into him at the Martinez jail on his way to meet Sergio Vega-Robles, though Wang had moved away from the drug unit and had no official involvement in the case.

In 2004, though, Wang was a high-ranking drug trafficking investigator who was working closely with Sergio Vega-Robles and other police informants. At one point, he reportedly warned Vega-Robles that a Richmond man, Jose Hernandez, was giving police information and they should “stay away.” Instead, “Jose Vega-Robles chose a different tack,” Kensok said. Hernandez was shot several times shortly thereafter, but survived.

Prosecutors only found out about the 2005 Hernandez shooting years later, after a witness came forward in the Mercado-Guzman murder case. When the DA’s office asked Richmond police for records of the shooting, they found there were none. They’d either never been filed, or someone had surreptitiously destroyed them.

Wang had been briefed on both the Grockett and Guzman-Mercado homicides, according to police records, and Caramagno insinuated that he had elicited false testimony from several former gang members, in order to frame Jose Vega-Robles.

“Wang needed to protect his cash cow, who of course was Sergio,” Caramagno said Friday.

But Kensok questioned why Wang, if he wanted to frame someone for murder, would pick his so-called cash cow’s brother as the scapegoat. He also suggested that the lack of reports on the Hernandez shooting suggested Wang knew he’d messed up by warning Sergio Vega-Robles.

Hernandez, when the allegations came to light, sued the city of Richmond and was awarded $700,000 in a settlement.