Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Win at all costs - Feds sought bigger drug deal to ensure a stiffer prison sentence

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Feds sought bigger drug deal to ensure a stiffer prison sentence

November 23, 1998
By Bill Moushey, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Michael Staufer lost his minimum wage job at about the same time he was robbed and beaten in August 1992 on a Los Angeles street.

Times were so tough he lived in a garage.

So when a friend named Scott suddenly pressed Staufer to find him 10,000 hits of LSD, Staufer wondered if the guy might have been high on the drug himself.

Staufer was 21 years old, partied hard and used LSD when he could afford it. Once, he’d bought 20 or 25 hits of the drug that he resold to his friends, but he wasn’t a dealer, and he certainly didn’t have the money to finance 10,000 hits.

What Staufer didn’t know was that federal agents had busted Scott on drug charges and promised him leniency if he would help the feds snare other drug dealers.

So Scott pressed Staufer, hoping to set him up in a drug deal that agents could then bust. So persistent was Scott that Staufer almost lost a part-time job he’d landed because of Scott’s repeated phone calls.

Finally, Staufer gave in and was introduced to the supposed buyer, who was an agent of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. The agent wanted 10,000 hits of LSD.

Staufer’s LSD supplier, who barely knew Staufer, initially resisted the deal because he knew Staufer was not in a position to pay for it. Then, the dealer told Staufer he would sell him 5,000 doses of the drug.

That wasn’t good enough for the undercover agent, who insisted on buying 10,000, knowing it would double Staufer’s prison time. After several conversations, Staufer finally cajoled his supplier to provide the larger amount. He was arrested when he showed the LSD to the agent.

A judge sentenced Staufer to the mandatory 12-year sentence federal law required.

"[The judge] explained to Staufer that the court of appeals had just reversed him for giving a life sentence to a man who had killed his wife by throwing her off a ship where they were spending their honeymoon, and [the judge] expressed his disapproval of a system that compelled him to ‘give Mr. Staufer for the transaction more time in prison than [he was] authorized to give a man who murdered his wife on their honeymoon,’ " according to Staufer’s appeal.

An appellate court eventually affirmed his conviction, but it was sent back to the lower court for re-sentencing. The court ruled his sentence should be reduced because of "sentencing entrapment" — the government forced Staufer into a bigger deal than he could really handle, just so the feds could double his prison term.

Staufer’s sentence was reduced to just more than six years.