Word: loreans
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...owner, pressed by racketeers for "street taxes," turned in fear to the FBI. Apparently the FBI did no soliciting and acted primarily as a middleman between call-girl rings and their customers, a less active role than the agency assumed in the drug sting of John De Lorean. Observed a happy FBI agent last week: "I don't think we'll have to worry about entrapment with this...
...Claiborne case proved, convictions can rarely be won on the basis of such testimony. "Corroboration is the key," says Stephen Trott, chief of the Justice Department's criminal division. "Without corroboration, you're probably dead in the water." In the De Lorean case, the prosecution thought it had plenty of corroboration: dozens of audio-and videotapes in which the industrialist seemed to agree to invest in a 220-lb. cocaine deal. But the jurors indicated in interviews after the acquittal that they regarded the tapes as inconclusive; they were more concerned about the credibility of the witnesses...
...weigh his background," said |one juror. "I did, and I discarded a lot." Add to this a stumbling performance by the Government's own agents, one of whom admitted destroying or altering some of his notes on the case, and the outcome was not surprising. De Lorean was also helped by his clean record. Most jurors concluded that the automaker had been lured by Hoffman into a crime he was not predisposed to commit-the legal definition, loosely, of entrapment. In many drug cases the defendants have long criminal histories, making any claims that they were gulled ring hollow...
...Lorean Defense Attorney Howard Weitzman took the occasion of his victory to denounce Government sting operations generally and the use of operatives like James Hoffman in particular. The jurors, Weitzman said, felt Hoffman was a "liar" and were "offended" by the fact that he was paid about $180,000 in "expenses" for his participation in the De Lorean and other investigations. While criminal witnesses are a "necessary evil," Weitzman believes "they have gotten out of hand; these people are given a license to fabricate and invent...
...Manhattan prosecutor: "You'd love to have witnesses who are all picked for their virtue and sterling characters, but it doesn't always happen that way. And so you take them where you find them." Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Perry made the same point to the De Lorean jury in the words of an old lawyers' axiom: "For a plot hatched in hell, don't expect angels for witnesses." -By Michael S. Serrill. Reported by Richard Woodbury/Los Angeles and John E. Yang/Washington