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APn 08/05/93 Topeka Shooting
By MATT TRUELL
Associated Press Writer
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) -- A man about to be sentenced on drug and weapons charges
rode an elevator to a federal court Thursday and began firing handguns and
lobbing pipe bombs when the doors opened, killing a security officer and
wounding a bystander, the FBI said.
The gunman died about an hour later when explosives strapped to his body
detonated, perhaps accidentally, FBI agent Brian Carroll said. At least three
other people were seriously injured in the blast.
But authorities didn't know until about six hours later that the man was
dead, and about nine people spent the time hiding in locked offices. Two judges
and their staffs also took cover after the initial gunfire but escaped down
stairs out of the gunman's sight.
The body of Jack Gary McKnight, 37, was found just inside the district court
clerk's office on the fourth floor of the Frank Carlson federal building.
Carroll refuted an earlier report from an FBI spokesman that the gunman had
fatally shot himself in the head.
SWAT team members didn't immediately disturb the body, and kept the building
under heavy guard Thursday night while it was checked to see if McKnight had set
other explosives before going to the clerk's office.
McKnight, of nearby Meriden, was to be sentenced on drug and weapons charges
Thursday on the fourth floor of the four-level building.
The FBI said McKnight apparently blew up his truck outside the Jefferson
County courthouse in Oskaloosa northeast of Topeka at about 8:30 a.m. and then
drove to Topeka in a car he blew up in the federal building parking lot at about
9:30 a.m., apparently to divert security officers.
Jackie Williams, U.S. attorney for Kansas, said McKnight apparently began
firing weapons as soon as the elevator doors opened on the fourth floor. Carroll
said McKnight also tossed pipe bombs, causing at least three or four explosions
inside the building.
Gene L. Goldsberry, 61, the security guard, apparently died instantly of a
gunshot wound, Williams said. A civilian nearby was seriously injured.
It wasn't immediately clear what McKnight did during the next hour. At one
point, Williams said, one of the court clerks approached McKnight and he told
her, "You're not the one that I'm looking for."
About that time, Williams said, the explosives strapped to McKnight's body
blew up. At least three women who worked in the clerk's office were injured by
the detonation. It couldn't be determined quickly why officials didn't know for
five more hours that McKnight was dead.
The dead guard was identified as Gene L. Goldsberry, 61, a retired Highway
Patrol trooper working for the U.S. Marshal's Service.
There is no security for the first three floors of the building. On the
fourth floor, people must pass through a metal detector to get to courtrooms.
The fourth floor contains the offices of three U.S. district judges,
including U.S. District Judge Sam Crow, who was to sentence McKnight, as well as
of a magistrate and two bankruptcy judges.
The red-brick building also houses congressional offices and some other
government offices.
Several other people, including the staff of U.S. Sen. Nancy Kassebaum, hid
on lower floors before law officers escorted them out, said Dave Bartel,
Kassebaum's chief of staff for Kansas.
Williams said McKnight was to be sentenced on charges of possession of
marijuana with intent to distribute and using a firearm in relation to a drug
offense. He was indicted on those charges in December along with his wife,
Cynthia, who pleaded guilty only to the weapons charge. She was scheduled to be
sentenced Friday.
Jefferson County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Owen said the charges against the
couple stem from an arrest Aug. 29, 1992, at their home. Deputies confiscated
more than 100 marijuana plants, cultivating equipment, several weapons, alleged
child pornography and other drug paraphernalia, Owen said.
McKnight had worked for the Santa Fe Railroad for 15 years, the last 12 in
the accounting department. He resigned last month. His wife, 36, worked for a
telephone company.
UPsw 08/05/93 Two dead, five injured in courthouse shootings, explosions
By PETER HANCOCK
TOPEKA, Kan. (UPI) -- A gunman armed with explosives opened fire Thursday in
the Frank J. Carlson Federal Building, killing a security officer and wounding
another person before dying in the bloody rampage.
Law enforcement officials gave different accounts of the gunman's death.
Kansas Bureau of Investigation Director Robert Davenport said he died when one
of his explosives went off, killing him and injuring three others.
Davenport said other devices remained attached to the corpse and police had
not yet approached the body.
FBI spokesman Jeff Lanza in Kansas City first said he died of an apparently
self-inflicted gunshot wound, but later agreed an explosive device attached to
the gunman's body had detonated.
The gunman was identified as Jack Gary McKnight, 37, Oskaloosa, Kan. He was
due in court Thursday for sentencing on drug and weapons convictions.
Davenport said McKnight apparently died just minutes after bursting out of an
elevator and opening fire on the fourth floor of the building where the
courtrooms are located.
He said McKnight was armed with homemade pipebombs and was tossing them
around.
Davenport said the suspect killed a security guard working at the metal
detector outside the courtrooms and injured another person standing nearby.
Three other people suffered injuries in the explosion that killed McKnight and a
fifth person suffered back injuries as he crawled through a ceiling while trying
to escape, Davenport said.
Lanza said the gunman "came off the elevator and started shooting."
"It surprises me that there were not more people hurt," Lanza said. "There
was a lot of shooting."
Lanza said at least 100 people were in the building when the incident began.
Four judges, their staffs and the staff of Sen. Nancy Kassebaum, R- Kan.,
were trapped in the building briefly but Lanza said they managed to flee.
Witnesses said at least three explosions rocked the area. The gunman also
fired shots at police officers standing outside the courthouse but none was
believed injured.
McKnight allegedly set off at least one car bomb shortly before he opened
fire. He reportedly was facing a long prison term on marijuana and weapons
convictions.
Shortly before the courthouse incident, a truck registered to the suspect
blew up in Oskaloosa, Lanza said.
Topeka Police Lt. Patti Kaeberle said police combed the building
floor-by-floor and found the gunman holed up in the clerk's office on the
fourth-floor office.
UPce 08/05/93 Former officer pleads guilty to drug charge
BELLEVILLE, Ill. (UPI) -- A former police officer in Fayetteville has pleaded
guilty to growing marijuana in the basement of his Belleville home.
Ricky Bien, 44, pleaded guilty Wednesday in St. Clair County Circuit Court to
unlawful production of marijuana.
Bien told Circuit Judge James Donovan he had formerly been a police office in
Fayetteville, was an auxiliary sheriff's deputy and also was a Vietnam veteran.
Donovan scheduled sentencing for Oct. 6. Bien will receive probation under
the terms of a plea agreement reached between his attorney and prosecutors,
court officials said.
Prosecutors said investigators obtained a search warrant after they received
information that Bien was growing marijuana. They said a search of Bien's home
showed the basement had been turned into a greenhouse, with potted plants under
growing lights on timers.
APn 08/06/93 Topeka Shooting
By MATT TRUELL
Associated Press Writer
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) -- The killer who stepped off a courthouse elevator
shooting and throwing homemade bombs may have gotten off at the wrong floor and
missed his intended victims, including federal prosecutors, authorities said
Friday.
Jack Gary McKnight, 37, was killed when a pipe bomb he was holding exploded
in the fourth-floor clerk's office of U.S. District Court on Thursday morning.
He killed a court security officer and injured five other people during the
assault.
Officials speculated that McKnight, who was to be sentenced on drug and
weapons charges Thursday, meant to get off at the third floor, where the U.S.
attorney's office is located.
"His target was the judicial or prosecution system," FBI agent Don Pettus
said.
Pettus said authorities also believe McKnight accidentally detonated the pipe
bomb that took his life, although he would have killed himself eventually. "The
way he was shooting around, throwing bombs around, no doubt, he wanted to commit
suicide, but we believe he still had more targets," Pettus said.
He said McKnight apparently killed his three pets -- two dogs and a cat -- at
his Meriden home that morning.
U.S. Attorney Jack Williams said McKnight may have been gunning for U.S.
District Judge Sam Crow, who was to have sentenced him, and other federal
officials.
"I don't think he meant to go to the clerk's office," Williams said. "I think
he probably was looking for the marshal's office, Judge Crow's office or the
U.S. attorney's office."
Williams said one clerk quoted McKnight as telling a woman at the office:
"You're not who I'm looking for."'
McKnight pleaded guilty in May to one count of possession of marijuana with
intent to sell and illegal use of a firearm during drug trafficking. He could
have been sentenced to up to 40 years in prison and fined $2 million.
McKnight's wife, Cynthia McKnight, was to have been sentenced on weapons
charges Friday, but U.S. Attorney Jack Williams said her sentencing was delayed
indefinitely.
The courthouse was closed Friday, and officials said they didn't know if it
would be cleaned up in time to reopen Monday.
McKnight was armed with three handguns and ammunition that he had purchased
at a Topeka gun store the day before the shootings, said Larry Scott of the
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms office in Kansas City, Mo.
He said McKnight signed a sworn statement at the time of the purchase that he
was not a convicted felon. The store's clerk did not violate any laws, Scott
said, because all the necessary paperwork had been taken care of.
Nine unexploded bombs were found in McKnight's truck, which he apparently
blew up outside the Jefferson County Courthouse in Oskaloosa on Thursday before
heading to the federal courthouse in Topeka.
He blew up his car in a parking lot adjacent to the federal building, Scott
said.
Pettus said McKnight fired about 60 shots and set off at least four pipe
bombs in the courthouse -- one on the hallway of the fourth floor and three
others in the clerk's office, including the one that killed him.
Of the five injured people, three were hospitalized Friday in satisfactory
condition and one was listed in fair condition. The fifth had been released.
The security guard who was killed was identified as Gene L. Goldsberry, 61,
an employee of the U.S. marshal's office.
RTw 08/06/93 COURT SYSTEM WAS TARGET OF TOPEKA GUNMAN, FBI SAYS
TOPEKA, Kan. (Reuter) - The gunman who killed a security officer and wounded
four other people in a shooting and bombing rampage Thursday kept police at bay
and hostages in hiding for several hours even after he was dead, the Federal
Bureau of Investigation said Friday.
"They didn't know they were being held hostage by a dead man," FBI
spokesman Jeff Lanza said.
Jack McKnight, scheduled to be sentenced to a lengthy jail term, fired
bullets and lobbed explosive devices onto the fourth floor of the federal
building here before accidentally blowing himself up early in the episode.
A security guard, Gene Goldsberry, 61, was shot and killed and a male
attorney seriously wounded when McKnight began firing after emerging from an
elevator onto the fourth floor of the Frank Carlson federal building.
Witnesses told police McKnight was tinkering with a bomb inside the court
clerk's office when it went off. The blast mangled McKnight's body and seriously
wounded three women with shrapnel and other debris.
Others hiding on the fourth floor did not know McKnight was dead, and
police did not discover his body or the injured women until about five hours
later.
"We had to meticulously and methodically go through the building floor by
floor. We had to work under the assumption he was alive and a possible danger,"
Lanza said.
The heavily armed McKnight lobbed three or four "explosive devices" into
the hallway, just as a car bomb he planted in the building's parking lot
exploded, Lanza said.
Facing a lengthy prison term, McKnight, 37, a convicted burglar, was
probably seeking revenge on people in the court system, Lanza said.
"We don't know who he was going after specifically, but he was probably
targeting the court system. He was going to lose his freedom for a long time,"
Lanza said.
McKnight pleaded guilty in May to possessing more than 100 marijuana plants
and was scheduled to be sentenced Thursday to a minimum of 10 years and a
maximum of 40 years in prison by federal judge Sam Crow.
REUTER
RTw 08/06/93 GUATEMALA-U.S. OPERATION DESTROYS MARIJUANA FIELDS
GUATEMALA CITY, Aug 6 (Reuter) - Guatemalan Treasury Police said on Friday
they had found marijuana fields covering 40 hectares (100 acres) in a joint
operation with the U.S. authorities in northeastern Guatemala.
Agents ripped up and burnt 60,000 marijuana plants at two farms in a
nine-hour operation on Thursday, and were to continue work on 13 remaining
plantations near the Belizean border on Friday, Treasury Police spokesman Luis
Barrios said.
No one was arrested in the operation, he said.
REUTER
WP 08/06/93 State Officials Seek to Derail Religious Rights Measure
By William Claiborne
Washington Post Staff Writer
Attorneys general across the country are desperately attempting to derail
legislation nearing a vote in the Senate that they say could force prisons to
supply inmates with organically grown vegetables washed in distilled water.
Prisoners could also, in the name of religious freedom, compel authorities to
supply them with chateaubriand and sherry, and even civilian clothing that would
make it easier for them to escape, the state officials said.
Each of those inmate demands - and other, equally bizarre requests based on
purported religious convictions - has been under litigation and would be
affected if the legislation is adopted without amendment, the officials said.
The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which attracted little public
attention during its journey through the congressional committee process and
unanimous adoption by the House in May, would counteract a 1990 Supreme Court
ruling that upheld the right of states to bar use of drugs in religious rituals.
A coalition of religious groups, ranging from liberal Protestants to
conservative Evangelicals, argues that the bill is necessary to uphold religious
freedom for mainstream churchgoers and that the state attorneys are exaggerating
the consequences of the measure.
The high court ruling, according to supporters of the bill, severely
curtailed the free-exercise clause of the First Amendment, causing about 60
court cases to be decided on the side of the government against religious
freedom, including cases involving Jews who object to autopsies, Muslim
prisoners seeking to avoid being served pork and Amish buggy drivers objecting
to motor vehicle fees.
In its 1990 decision, the Supreme Court abandoned a test used in earlier
cases that required a state to prove it had a "compelling interest" in enforcing
a statute that infringed on religious freedom.
The Senate bill would allow such an infringement only if it furthers a
compelling government interest and is the "least restrictive means" of
furthering that interest. Attorney General Janet Reno has said she supports the
bill and opposes any amendment to exempt prisons.
The 26 state attorneys general said in a letter to the Senate that the bill's
"least restrictive means" test would guarantee prison inmates success in their
requests for a variety of religious-inspired diets and other special privileges,
many of which would be prohibitively costly and which would compromise prison
security.
The state attorneys cited a lawsuit in Ohio in which an inmate claimed his
religion requires him to have steak and wine every night; a Nevada case in which
an inmate demanded marijuana, lobster and white wine on religious grounds; and a
Wyoming case in which an inmate of Chinese ancestry who was considered to be the
facility's highest escape risk demanded the right to pray in an American Indian
sweat lodge outside the maximum-security area.
The legislation, the state officials say, could cost states hundreds of
millions of dollars if they comply with inmates' dietary and other special
requests, or equal amounts of public funds if they fight the thousands of court
cases that likely would be filed on the basis of Congress's action.
Yet, the Congressional Budget Office, apparently without consulting state
prison officials, estimated the measure would result in "no significant cost" to
federal, state and local governments.
Some state officials complained that the measure, sponsored by Sens. Edward
M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), is another example of federal
lawmakers adopting a seemingly laudable reform measure and taking credit for it
while passing the cost of implementation to the states without regard for how it
will affect local budgets.
If the bill passes, it would cause "serious institutional disruption" and tie
up government attorneys in inmate lawsuits for years, Attorneys General Daniel
E. Lungren of Florida and Frankie Sue Del Papa of Nevada said in a separate
letter last week to Hatch and Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), Judiciary
Committee chairman.
Sen. Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) has introduced an amendment that would exempt
correctional institutions. But a spokeswoman for Kennedy said, "Our position is
that such an amendment is not necessary."
Oliver Thomas, chairman of the Coalition for Free Exercise of Religion, which
includes 68 religious and civil rights groups that are supporting the bill, said
that while he accepts that "prison litigation is out of control," only a small
percentage of inmate lawsuits involve religion.
Acknowledging the bizarre nature of some inmate demands based on religion,
Thomas said, "You get these things on both sides." He cited the recent example
of an Episcopalian on a Colorado work-release program who was refused permission
to take communion because of state prohibitions against consuming alcohol.
WP 08/08/93 Bad Money and the Bar; Can Defense Lawyers Keep Drug Dealers' Dirty Cash?
By Alicia Mundy
AMONG THE unfashionable tactics in the war on drugs is a little-used weapon
called lawyers' fee forfeiture. You rarely read about it. But today it's
nettling the Washington legal community like nothing since Dan Quayle attacked
their tassled loafers.
The cause of this consternation is a small-time federal court case in
Alexandria in which the government is suing to reclaim money from a lawyer who
received fees of $103,000, in cash, from an admitted drug dealer. The case has
prompted officials of the American Bar Association, the National Association of
Criminal Defense Lawyers and the American Trial Lawyers Association to join
hands to take on a handful of federal prosecutors in Virginia. These groups may
soon be joined by the NAACP. Top guns from Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering are
defending the accused lawyer for free, while ABA officials are busily lobbying
Attorney General Janet Reno. The goal of this effort is not just to quash this
case, but to cancel the forfeiture policy itself. Overkill? Not to the defense
bar, which recognizes a compelling financial interest when it sees one.
It's against the law for anyone, even lawyers, to knowingly accept tainted
fees - that is, money from a crime. But for years now, when working for drug
dealer clients, defense lawyers have practiced their own version of "Don't ask,
don't tell." They don't ask their clients where they get $100,000 or more in
cash to pay legal fees, and the clients don't tell them. Lawyers have to report
cash payments to the IRS. But the IRS and the Justice Department don't spend
much time forcing lawyers to explain the source of the money. There have been
only about 55 federal cases of lawyers' fee forfeiture brought since 1986.
"It's a hassle," explains a high-ranking Justice official, "trying to prove
the lawyers knew or should have known they were being handed dirty money." Such
a hassle that the expense of recovering fees is usually outweighed by the cost
to the government. Bringing such cases is also an act of professional suicide.
If a lowly federal prosecutor starts poking at the hornets' nest of lawyers'
fees, he or she will provoke a swarm of angry private attorneys who will never
hire this person later. No wonder that the case brought by the feds in
Alexandria has earned the nickname "Death Wish II."
_Still, you can't blame Jay Apperson and Gordon Kromberg for trying. These two
assistant U.S. attorneys decided they had a case so blatant that they couldn't
pass it up.
That case began when Apperson, a narcotics prosecutor, heard a tape recording
on which the girlfriend of Paul Covington complained to one of his distributors
about all the money he had to collect to pay his lawyer, Bill Moffitt of
Alexandria. Moffitt is a nationally renowned attorney who has just become the
secretary of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL). A
rough-and-tumble defense lawyer, he's ticked off narcotics prosecutors from
Florida to New York, especially those who expect defendants to deal and squeal -
plea bargain and turn informant on other drug distributors. Moffit doesn't like
to deal.
His client, Paul Covington, showed up on the doorstep in August 1991. The
35-year-old Fairfax native ran Paul's Auto Service in Springfield; he also ran a
bustling side business in cocaine. By the time Covington came to Moffitt, he had
been under investigation for a year, expected to be indicted and had already had
his auto repair business, bank accounts, cars and house seized as drug profits.
Moffitt and his partner, John Zwerling, after interviewing Covington, told
him they'd need about $100,000 as a retainer. Moffitt told Covington he wouldn't
take "funny money" - by which he says he meant money from drug profits. Moffitt
had some experience with this issue. A few years ago, he helped prepare a brief
for the Supreme Court in a narcotics case that now applies to legal fee
forfeiture. In 1989, the Court ruled the firm of Caplin & Drysdale had to hand
over $170,000 in legal fees to the government because it should have known the
money came from drug profits.
But when Paul Covington produced $17,000 in cash on Aug. 22, Moffitt accepted
it.
The following day, Moffitt and Zwerling met with Apperson and another
assistant U.S. attorney, and they were told that the feds had accounted for, and
seized, all of Covington's possessions and his drug money. According to
prosecutors, the defense lawyers were told that Covington's "legit" businesses
had become shams - money-laundering operations for his thriving coke and
marijuana corporation. The prosecutors said that anything else left over was
probably tainted, and that, as far as they could tell, Covington was flat broke.
To prosecutors, the message to Moffitt was clear: If Covington's paid you a
nickel, it probably belongs to the government. But Moffitt testified that
prosecutors were merely offering an opinion about Covington's financial state,
never saying explicitly that Moffitt's fees were drug money.
As court documents indicate, Covington showed up a day later to pay the rest
of his retainer with a shoebox containing $86,000 in cash. Still, nobody asked
him where the money came from. Moffitt's firm wrote him a receipt and duly
reported the cash earnings to the IRS (without mentioning the name of the client
- an oversight that the Justice Department found a bit disturbing). Moffitt
argued in court, as many other defense lawyers have long contended, that he
didn't have to identify Covington because of attorney-client privilege.
Where'd the money in the shoebox come from? Not the local Fayva outlet. As
Covington explained in later court testimony, Covington had lost his emergency
cash stash several months earlier when he dug up a grocery bag of coke money he
had hidden along Pohick Parkway in Fairfax and found that leaves and dirt had
rotted the bag. The bills inside had turned purple. Unwilling to pay his lawyer
with such psychedelic currency, Covington called one of his coke distributors to
ask him for money he owed Covington. Covington testified that he collected the
money from this sub-dealer to pay Moffitt. But he says he didn't tell Moffitt
how he suddenly came up with $86,000 in cash, and "Moffitt didn't ask."
Moffitt's lawyers see it differently. In a July federal court hearing, they
told Judge T.S. Ellis that Covington - who, according to Moffitt's own defense,
has a history of psychiatric problems, alcoholism and addiction - was a very
careful saver. "He had a near-reverence for hoarding U.S. currency," Moffitt
testified - a tendency he picked up from his father. Scrimping and scraping,
Moffitt said, Covington could well have amassed a nest egg of almost $100,000 in
cash. Anyway, explained Moffitt to Judge Ellis, he had no reason to think
Covington was handing him drug money and "I just didn't ask him."
Four months later, Covington was indicted and dropped Moffitt for a new
attorney. Moffitt says that the U.S. attorneys coerced the dealer into asking
for a new attorney so that they could go after Moffitt himself, a long-time
thorn in their side. Whatever the reason, Moffitt and Zwerling were off of the
Covington case by August 1992.
Several months later, the Justice Department approved a request by Apperson
and Kromberg to try to reclaim the $103,000 fee, which, by now, Covington and
two other dealers had told prosecutors was indeed drug money. "After negotiating
with Moffitt for a year on Covington's plea, and after his failure to reveal the
source of his cash payment on IRS forms, there was absolutely no reason to
believe that Moffitt was going to suddenly, voluntarily cooperate with the
government," a Justice official who reviewed this case explains.
That's when the case turned ugly - that's when national legal coalitions
charged the prosecutors with misconduct, deception and racism.
_Give Moffitt, who is African American, credit for laying the groundwork. In a
motion fighting the fee forfeiture, he said he was a victim of Hitler's justice
and cited the Clarence Thomas hearings in a searing closing paragraph: "If the
Hill-Thomas hearings were a `high-tech lynching of an uppity black,' then the
tactics utilized against . . . Mr. Moffitt in this case are the low-tech
equivalent."
Good line - so good that Kromberg quoted it two months later. That was a
mistake.
Kromberg's office had just subpoenaed two lesser-known local lawyers, asking
about their fees, in another drug case. In a hearing in June, the attorneys for
those lawyers charged that Kromberg had told them he wanted it clear his office
wasn't singling out any one attorney - that it wasn't anyone's intent to target
one "uppity black," as Moffitt claimed. The judge in that case quashed the
subpoenas and sharply criticized the prosecutors; proving you're not a racist,
the judge suggested, isn't a good enough reason to subpoena defense lawyers.
What's more, the damage to the Moffitt case was done. The NACDL charged
racism, other defense lawyers worried they'd get subpoenaed and the lawyers'
mobilization began.
Moffitt is adamant that the government wanted him because he's black, and
says, "They (the U.S. attorneys) can kiss my butt."
The charge that the prosecutors are racist and overzealous has obscured
another meaningful issue for lawyers: loss of income. "This issue isn't about
fees," insists Marvin Miller, a nationally recognized defense lawyer. "It's
about the right to have the lawyer of your choice. If the government starts
making it impossible for lawyers to represent people charged with drug dealing,
the only lawyers for them will be public defenders," Miller adds, making "public
defenders" sound like sewer cleaners.
Still, shouldn't lawyers be subject to the same tainted-money laws that
govern the rest of us? Moffitt's lawyer explained it this way to Judge Ellis:
"Lawyers should be treated a little differently, to protect defendants' rights."
But Judge Murnagahn of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond answered
that one a few years back, when he wrote, "To me, it simply distorts the concept
of a democratic process to put the lawyer in a separate category and free him of
a responsibility which must be assumed by other citizens."
Will holding lawyers to that citizen-standard prevent accused drug dealers
from getting good representation? "There's an easy way around this," argues an
assistant U.S. attorney. "Lawyers should not take cash, and if they do they
should ask where it comes from. It's that simple."
Things look more complicated to the Justice Department, which has been
showered with amicus briefs from a slew of officials from the ABA, the criminal
lawyer's association and prominent attorneys from L.A. to New York. And perhaps
administration officials recall that the lawyers' associations were the largest
contributors to the Clinton campaign.
The Justice Department is being pressured to order Apperson and Kromberg to
drop the case before Judge Ellis rules on it this month. That's happened before.
In 1987, an assistant attorney general ordered an assistant U.S. attorney to
drop a similar forfeiture case because, according to sources then with Justice,
"the case was weak and the prosecutor had gone overboard." This time, even
Justice officials who are skeptical of the value of forfeiture policy believe
this case is strong.
But that's not really the issue. The real issue is whether it's sensible for
Justice to get into a sparring match with its colleagues on the bar. A Justice
official sums up the general sentiment this way: "(Forfeiture) may be the law.
But it's just not worth the trouble."
Alicia Mundy is a writer for Washingtonian.
UPwe 08/09/93 Famed attorney charged in laundering case
SAN FRANCISCO (UPI) -- Famed defense attorney Patrick Hallinan, who once
defended Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver, was formerly charged Monday with
conspiracy, drug dealing and money laundering.
Hallinan appeared before U.S. Magistrate Phyllis Hamilton to answer charges
handed down by a Reno, Nev., federal grand jury. Convicted drug dealer Ciro
Mancuso allegedly told the grand jury that Hallinan was involved in drug and
money-laundering schemes.
However, his brother, San Francisco Supervisor Terence Hallinan, said the
charges were merely a matter of a convicted drug dealer trying to lighten his
sentence.
Hallinan was released on $300,000 bail.
The government told the judge it had found marijuana in a closet at the
59-year-old Hallinan's luxury Bay Area home. Federal authorities also are
curious about $600,000 in cash transactions made by Hallinan.
The investigation, the federal government said, has been going on for at
least three years.
If found guilty, Hallinan could be sentenced to 20 years in jail and could
lose his home and law practice.
UPne 08/09/93 Ohio pot bust nets New York City man
ELYRIA, Ohio (UPI) -- A routine traffic stop on Interstate 90 during the
weekend evolved into a drug bust in which 156 pounds of marijuana was
confiscated.
Ernesto Monge-Valasquez, 24, New York City and Leticia Raquel Escajeba, 23,
Tucson, Ariz. were arrested and charged with aggravated drug trafficking and
possession of criminal tools.
The Ohio Highway Patrol stopped the couple's eastbound pickup truck about
one-half mile east of the Ohio Turnpike's Elyria township exit on a traffic
violation.
A drug-sniffing dog alerted troopers to the possiblity that there were
illegal drugs in the car. The dogs are used randomly by the patrol to sniff
around the outside of stopped cars.
At the patrol garage in Elyria, troopers discovered 156 pounds of marijuana
in a fake bottom in the bed.
Police estimated the marijuana would have a street value of $300,000.
The marijuana was formed into 6-pound bricks wrapped in plastic, enough to
fill 13 normal-sized grocery bags.
APn 08/09/93 New Cocaine Road
By TODD LEWAN
Associated Press Writer
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) -- Colombian drug cartels are moving huge amounts
of cocaine through the western jungles, turning Brazil into a major pipeline to
the United States and Europe.
Traffickers set up portable laboratories in jungle clearings to refine coca
paste into cocaine, which is then smuggled through the vast Amazon river system
to Atlantic ports for export.
Colombian drug money has penetrated all levels of Brazilian society,
corrupting port and border guards, bank managers, judges and legislators.
Billions in profits are laundered through travel agencies, shops and other small
businesses, many of them owned by the traffickers.
Last year, Sao Paulo police discovered $5 million in cardboard boxes on an
empty charter plane from New York. They said the money was to have been
laundered and sent on to Colombia.
Domestic drug consumption is growing among Brazilians of all ages and
classes. Traffickers are increasingly influential in politics, commerce, even
crime control.
"All of our nightmares are coming true," Edson de Oliveira, chief of Interpol
for Brazil, said in an interview. "If Brazil isn't the principal route for Latin
traffickers, then it's got to be one of the most important."
Isaac Bareto, president of the Federal Narcotics Council, said: "We are in
grave danger of becoming a grand-scale Colombia."
Eight raids in May and June netted 24,200 pounds of cocaine, largely produced
by the Cali cartel and bound for the United States, Italy, Spain, the
Netherlands and Africa.
Although that is four times the total seized in all of 1990, drug agents and
police acknowledge it represents only a small part of the flourishing trade.
"Eleven tons of cocaine seized in two months is ... really not any more than
5 percent of the total amount going through Brazil," said a ranking U.S.
official in Brasilia, the capital. He spoke on condition of anonymity.
For Brazilians, the drug is comparatively cheap: about $6 a gram, the price
of a pizza.
Students sell cocaine and LSD in the lunchrooms of Rio high schools. Children
as young as 5 run cocaine to customers for traffickers who control the hillside
slums like fiefdoms.
In the "favelas," as the slums are called, the Red Command and Third Command
crime gangs fight daily turf wars. In June, a battle in the Morro dos Prazeres
slum raged for three days because the traffickers had more firepower than
police. Order was restored only after the army provided combat weapons.
A Roman Catholic nun who teaches in a private school on the poor northern
outskirts told a reporter 10-year-old children have been caught sniffing
cocaine.
"The drugs are everywhere," she said, on condition her name not be revealed.
"They used to hide it inside hollow pens, but now it's sold openly, in plastic
bags, on playgrounds."
Colombia has long dominated the Latin American drug trade, but a crackdown on
the Medellin cartel and its boss, Pablo Escobar, led other traffickers to shift
operations. Since 1989, they have moved into Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and the
Amazon basin with mobile labs capable of producing more than a ton of cocaine a
month.
Small planes loaded with coca paste from Bolivia and Peru leapfrog through
the Brazilian jungle states of Mato Grosso, Rondonia, Para and Amazonas,
refueling and dropping cargo at an estimated 600 secret airstrips.
After making their deliveries, the planes are destroyed so they cannot be
traced, and others often are stolen to replace them. Federal police say 40
planes have been taken from jungle airports in the past two years.
Traffickers hire Amazon Indians and farmers to grow coca and transport paste.
Some police officers provide cover for smugglers or sell drugs confiscated in
raids to supplement their meager salaries.
In Belem, at the mouth of the Amazon, the chief of the Para state narcotics
division and an assistant were arrested in June for selling 22 pounds of
confiscated cocaine.
On April 5, three federal narcotics agents were arrested for stealing 310
pounds of cocaine from a federal police warehouse in Manaus, capital of Amazonas
state. The cocaine, valued at $5 million, was seized months earlier in a raid on
a portable lab.
What worries drug agents most is the enormous task of keeping up with the
trade in a country larger than the 48 contiguous United States that has 9,000
miles of open borders with 10 countries, including Bolivia, Peru and Colombia.
As cocaine sales abroad soared in the 1980s, traffickers began taking
advantage of Brazil's complex river network, good air connections and 4,600-mile
coastline.
Most of the drugs flowed out of the southern cities of Rio and Sao Paulo, but
after a crackdown in 1992, smugglers began using the dense northwestern rain
forests.
According to State Department figures, the United States has increased
financing of anti-drug operations in Brazil from $200,000 in 1985 to $3.5
million in 1992. A ranking U.S. official in Brasilia said contributions probably
will remain the same in 1994.
The money has helped federal police search airports, conduct raids in at
least 10 states and destroy thousands of acres of marijuana plantations.
Brazilian officials fear heroin may be next. Colombia's production of
poppies, the raw material for morphine and heroin, has grown 25-fold since 1991,
said a report the Colombian government issued in May.
No shipments have been seized, "but that doesn't mean heroin isn't already
passing through Brazil," said Mauro Sposito, superintendent of the federal
police in Amazonas state.
"If we don't stop this trade, within five years we'll be the principal
pipeline for Colombian heroin to the world," he said.
End Adv for Mon AMs Aug 9
APn 08/10/93 Pot Field Shooting
BRODHEAD, Ky. (AP) -- A man who sat in a lawn chair guarding his marijuana
field with an assault rifle was shot to death by police after a daylong
standoff.
Gary Shepherd, 45, had told police they would "have to kill me" to get at his
plants, state police said in a statement Monday.
The standoff began Sunday after members of a state task force in a helicopter
spotted about 50 plants behind his home.
The troopers landed and told Shepherd they were going to cut down the plants,
said Trooper Gilbert Acciardo, a state police spokesman.
Shepherd went inside and came out with a rifle.
"He was pretty much sitting there, probably about six or seven hours," Deputy
Sheriff Darrell Doan said. "He didn't talk to us at all."
Shepherd was shot several times in the head and chest as he raised his rifle
toward the troopers, authorities said.
Mary Jane Jones, 42, who lived with Shepherd and their young son, said that
he never pointed the gun at anybody and that police made no serious effort to
negotiate.
"There was never a time that anybody pulled into the driveway and said, `Sir,
we are not armed. ... We want to talk to you,"' she said. "If Gary had had the
chance to done that, that would have made his day."
Jones said Shepherd had deep convictions about marijuana use and wanted to
discuss those with police. Jones was standing on the porch during the shooting
and was grazed by a bullet.
Brewer said the two officers involved in the shooting were placed on leave
pending an investigation.
End
Compiled by
Paul Stanford