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Hiding the facts (cont.) Facing no consequences Indeed, the Post-Gazette found no federal prosecutors eager to apologize for their conduct. The only public reprimands tended to come from judges who overturned convictions on appeal. And by that point in the judicial process, a defendant often had already served months or years in prison. Chake Kojayan, a middle-aged Lebanese woman, flew into Los Angeles in June 1991 with $100,000 worth of heroin sewn into her bag. Within a day of her arrival, an acquaintance sold the drugs to two undercover Drug Enforcement Administration agents. Kojayan and three others were arrested. She and the other defendants insisted they never knew the drugs were in the bag. The other defendants maintained that another man, Krikor Nourian, was behind the smuggling venture. In fact, Nourian had been involved, and federal agents promised him leniency in exchange for information he provided about Kojayan and the other defendants. But defense attorneys were never told he’d become an informant, even though they repeatedly asked prosecutors to turn over information that would detail his role in the case. No fewer than 11 times during the trial, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Sinek insisted that Nourian had no role. Kojayan and her co-defendants were convicted and received sentences ranging from six to 20 years in prison. Two years later, defense lawyers learned that Nourian had been a government informer and that Sinek knew it. Had defense attorneys known that during the trial, they could have presented a credible defense that Nourian was snitching on innocent people to save himself — which is exactly what Kojayan maintained. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion on Kojayan’s appeal in 1993 that could as easily apply to hundreds of other discovery violations found by the Post-Gazette: "What we find most troubling about this case is not the [assistant U.S. attorney’s] initial transgression, but that he seemed to be totally unaware he’d done anything at all wrong, and that there was no one in the United States attorney’s office to set him straight. "Nor does the government’s considered response, filed after we pointed out the problem, inspire our confidence that this kind of thing won’t happen again. "How can it be that a serious claim of prosecutorial misconduct remains unresolved — even unaddressed — until oral argument in the [9th U.S.] Court of Appeals? Surely, when such a claim is raised, we can expect that someone in the United States attorney’s office will take an independent, objective look at the issue. "Yet the United States attorney allowed the filing of a brief in our court that did not own up to the problem, a brief that itself skated perilously close to misrepresentation." The court ordered Kojayan released from prison. Sinek was never disciplined for misleading the court. He didn’t play along Prosecutors frequently argue that their discovery violations are inadvertent. That would be a tough argument to make in the drug-smuggling case against Miami attorney Frank Quintero Jr. For years, Quintero had represented drug smugglers. Federal prosecutors in 1994 charged that he had gone from being a counsel for drug smugglers to becoming one himself. In preparing their case, they interviewed Constantine Roca, the manager of a Florida marina. An informant had told federal agents that Roca had handled the purchase of drug boats for Quintero and his Colombian cartel clients. But when questioned, Roca insisted that simply wasn’t true. In fact, he didn’t even know Quintero. Roca’s statement carried weight — he had no criminal record. Roca’s statement clearly should have been given to defense attorneys under the court’s discovery order. But it wasn’t, and the case went to trial without the defense knowing of Roca’s existence. Had a defense attorney ignored a similar court order, he might have been disbarred, or at least subjected to sanctions from an ethics tribunal. Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Pelletier’s deceit brought no sanctions. Quintero’s first trial ended in a mistrial — and his attorneys learned of Roca’s statement from Roca’s attorney as they prepared for Quintero’s second trial. So they promptly put Roca’s name on their own witness list — which proved to be bad news for Roca. In September 1996, just a few days after learning Roca might be a witness for Quintero, Pelletier and Deputy U.S. Marshal Joe Godsk obtained a search warrant for Roca’s business. They would not reveal the basis for the warrant — the agents refused Roca’s lawyer’s request for a copy of an affidavit of probable cause, and that information was nowhere on the public record. Armed agents found nothing in the search that would result in charges against Roca. Nor did they find evidence in the Quintero case. But Roca’s landlord had seen enough. He evicted Roca, which effectively destroyed his business. And for good measure, the government didn’t return his business records until after Roca had gone bankrupt.
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