Out of
control
Legal rules have changed, allowing federal
agents, prosecutors to bypass basic rights
November 22, 1998 By Bill Moushey, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
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Loren Pogue had
never been involved with drugs until a government informant tied him
to a phony real estate deal after lying about a drug cartel link.
The informant got cash for the information. Pogue, 65, got 22 years
in prison, even though he’s still not sure why he was the target of
an investigation to begin with. (Joe
Patronite) |
Loren Pogue has served eight years of a 22-year federal prison sentence
on drug conspiracy and money laundering charges.
Pogue, a Missouri native, never bought drugs, never sold them, never
held them, never used them, never smuggled them, never even saw them.
But because federal prosecutors allowed a paid government informant to
lie about Pogue’s involvement in the sale of a parcel of land to supposed
drug smugglers, he was convicted. Under tough federal sentencing
guidelines, a judge had no choice but to give the Air Force veteran what
might effectively be a death sentence.
Pogue — father of 27 children, 15 of them adopted — is 65. He doesn’t
expect to leave prison alive, and as details later in this story will
show, he is baffled that the government he served for more than 30 years
worked so hard to betray him.

In another case, hundreds of miles away, federal agents interrogated
businessman Dale Brown for four hours at a Houston, Texas, warehouse. When
he tried to leave, they stopped him. When he asked for a lawyer, they
refused to get him one.
After Brown finally was charged in a government sting called Operation
Lightning Strike, federal prosecutors denied that the warehouse
interrogation had even happened. They said the dozen others who reported
the same coercive tactics in the sting were making it up, too.
Federal sting operations are supposed to snare criminals, but in
Operation Lightning Strike, federal agents spent millions of dollars
entrapping innocent people who worked on the periphery of the U.S. space
program.
The evidence against them was contrived. The guilty pleas were coerced.
Those who fought the charges won.
Brown said all it cost him was his business, his savings, his family
and his health.

In Florida, prisoners call the scam "jumping on the bus," and it is as
tantalizing as it is perverse. Inmates in federal prisons barter or buy
information that only an insider to a crime could know — often from
informants with access to confidential federal crime files.
The prisoners memorize it and get others to do the same. Then, to win
sentence reductions, they testify about crimes that might have been
committed while they were in prison, by people they’ve never met, in
places they’ve never been. The scam succeeds only because of the tacit
approval of federal law enforcement officers.
Cocaine smuggler Jose Goyriena used "jump on the bus" testimony to help
federal prosecutors put three men in prison for life, and he was set to do
it again for prosecutors who promised to cut his 27 year sentence by 10
years or more.
Prosecutors knew Goyriena had bragged about his lies to cellmates, but
the prosecutors didn’t reveal what they’d heard to any of the men Goyriena
had helped condemn — violating one of the fundamental tenets of American
justice. It was defense attorneys who finally caught Goyriena in the
scam.

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Loren Pogue,
above, was caught in a government sting driven by a paid informant.
When the sting failed to snare big-time drug dealers, the informant
trapped someone he knew: Pogue. (Joe
Patronite) |
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In this nation’s war on crime, something has gone terribly wrong.
A two-year investigation by the Post-Gazette found that powerful new
federal laws designed to snare terrorists, drug smugglers and
pornographers are being aimed at business owners, engineers and petty
criminals.
Whether suspects are guilty has come to matter less than making sure
they are indicted or convicted or, more likely, coerced into pleading
guilty.
Promises of lenient sentences and huge government checks encourage
criminals to lie on the witness stand. Prosecutors routinely withhold
evidence that might help prove a defendant innocent. Some federal agents
work so closely with their undercover informants that they become
lawbreakers themselves.
Those who practice this misconduct are almost never penalized or
disciplined. "It’s a result-oriented process today, fairness be damned,"
said Robert Merkle, whom President Ronald Reagan appointed U.S. Attorney
for the Middle District of Florida, serving from 1982 to 1988.
"The philosophy of the past 10 to 15 years [is] that whatever works is
what’s right."
The Justice Department did not respond to questions the newspaper posed
in writing about concerns raised in this series. Nor would it return phone
calls requesting comment.
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