Judge Says FBI's Fumbling Of Documents Echoes The Timothy McVeigh Case

CHRISTIANSBURG LAWYER CONTINUES TO FIGHT CONVICTION

Keith Neely Has Been Set Free On Bond In Order To Work More Closely With
His Lawyer On The Appeal Of His 1993 Conviction

His own mother called him Don Johnson for the "Miami Vice" actor as he
tooled around Christiansburg in designer suits and a Jaguar with
personalized "Neely" plates.

Throughout the 1980s, Christiansburg lawyer Keith Neely lived the high
life. That life included a lot of booze and cocaine.

Meanwhile, Neely crossed swords regularly with prosecutors, taking on
high-profile cases - often winning.

Those victories - and his weaknesses - made Neely a susceptible target for
federal prosecution, he says.

"If you're going to go up against the government, you have to be squeaky
clean and wear a white hat," Neely said. "You have to."

But federal authorities have argued that they went after Neely because he
used his law office to facilitate drug deals and launder money.

On March 26, 1993, twelve jurors convicted Neely in federal court on drug
and money laundering charges but acquitted him of racketeering and
conspiracy. In 1994, Neely was sentenced to 10 years and a month, the
minimum under federal sentencing guidelines for his conviction on one of
the drug counts. He entered federal prison in 1996.

For the last seven years, Neely has been fighting his conviction.

On June 1, a federal judge, ruling that the FBI mishandled case files Neely
sought, set him free on bond to pursue his quest for a new trial.

Permitted to travel only between his mother's Christiansburg home, a law
library in Montgomery County or Radford, and the office of his lawyer, Max
Jenkins, Neely is nonetheless thrilled that he has been given the chance to
try to prove his innocence outside federal prison.

"Contrary to what the government says, I never went over the edge," Neely
said. "But I got too close to it."

The Early Years

Neely wanted to be a lawyer from the time he was a child.

"I still don't know where he got that from," said his mother, 84-year-old
June Neely. "We've got a lot of liars in the family, but no lawyers."

Neely grew up in a working-class family in Christiansburg, the youngest of
three. He got involved in sports from an early age, playing football in
high school and college and later rugby during law school at the University
of Richmond.

"He always wanted to win," said June Neely, a Senior Olympian herself who
won medals last month despite bruising her ribs a few weeks before. "He was
very aggressive."

Soon after Neely graduated from law school, he returned to Christiansburg,
where he quickly established a reputation for taking on high-profile cases
- and for flamboyance.

Neely crossed paths with Assistant U.S. Attorney Karen Peters when he
represented Mabel Amerson, a Pulaski County baby sitter accused of
murdering her employer. Amerson was acquitted in 1988. Peters would later
prosecute Neely.

Meanwhile, Neely was also partying hard .

In 1990, he was convicted on a federal cocaine possession charge. Then in
1992, Neely was indicted on racketeering, money laundering and other drug
charges.

A key government witness during Neely's 1993 trial was a former Department
of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent turned drug dealer named Donald
Kimbler. Kimbler, who was dying of cancer when he testified, had been freed
from a 15-year sentence because of his illness - and his cooperation with
federal prosecutors.

Kimbler and Neely had met years earlier in federal court. Neely represented
one of more than a dozen international defendants accused of smuggling.
Kimbler was a private investigator representing another dealer. They became
friends and started using drugs together. Kimbler also testified that he
and Neely began their own cocaine smuggling operation.

Michael Giacolone was another federal witness who received a lighter
sentence in exchange for cooperating with the government. During Neely's
trial, Giacolone testified that Neely knew he was accepting drug money when
they went into a land deal together.

Neely was convicted .

June Neely has been in constant attendance during her son's court
appearances. Of her son's case, she said:

"Sometimes someone will ask me in a whisper, 'Well, what about Keith?' And
I say, 'You don't have to whisper; we're not ashamed of anything.'"

Life After Conviction

The criminal defense lawyer-turned-felon appealed his convictions from the
start.

After the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld his conviction in 1996, Neely
entered federal prison.

Since then, Neely has been ferried between local jails and minimum-security
institutions.

Marshaling his legal knowledge, Neely set out to get a new trial. The same
year he went in, he filed requests seeking the documents in the FBI case
file under the Freedom of Information Act.

In 1997, he filed a civil suit against the FBI, alleging the agency was
stonewalling. As a lawyer who saw the evidence presented at his own trial,
Neely knew what the file should contain and felt that the FBI was holding
documents back.

The government has argued that Neely always had access to the evidence they
presented at his trial.

Then in 1998, Neely requested a new trial on the basis of new evidence.
Michael Giacolone, who had testified against Neely in his 1993 trial, had
recanted.

Radford attorney Max Jenkins was appointed to represent Neely.

At the low-security facilities in Morgantown and Beckley, W.Va., Neely has
been able to determine his schedule, for the most part. He estimated he
spent about six hours a day working on his case, using the limited law
library and typing motions on a typewriter. He also estimates he's run
about 5,500 miles around prison camp yards since he went into the system.

Early on, Neely would ask his mother to make photocopies of cases from the
Virginia Tech library and bring them to him. Jenkins has also been
instrumental in helping his case, Neely said.

Jenkins said he's had more trouble trying to get access to Neely to work on
the case than he had when he had clients on death row in maximum-security
prisons. Neely's phone calls and visits were restricted, even when his case
started to heat up. Jenkins said he had to ask Senior U.S. District Court
Judge Jackson Kiser to contact Beckley so he would have more access to Neely.

Earlier this month, Neely's six years of efforts to get released on bond to
work on his own case were rewarded when Kiser ordered that Neely be set
free on $25,000 bond.

When the official call came into Receiving and Discharge, Neely was ready.
He'd already packed his five cardboard boxes full of legal documents.

Prison camp officials told Neely he had 30 minutes to pack up.

"I was down there in 20," he said.

Developments

Almost since Neely came in front of Kiser for the first time in 1990, Kiser
has expressed reservations about how the charges against him have been handled.

In particular, Kiser has singled out the FBI for mishandling documents in
the case.

Last month, the FBI turned over, on the day the agency faced contempt of
court charges, some 200 documents that were in a field office "unbeknownst"
to federal authorities. Kiser compared that action to the recent
developments in the case of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. After
federal authorities found some 4,000 documents in that case that were never
turned over to McVeigh's attorneys, his execution date was postponed.

"I hated for him to be on the same page as Timothy McVeigh," June Neely
said. But if it helped her son's case, she was for it.

Neely has claimed that he has new evidence in the case, which warrants a
new trial.

He pointed to an internal FBI document from March 31, 1993, that he
received under the Freedom of Information Act.

The document, sent from the Richmond FBI to the Cleveland FBI, concerns one
of Neely's alleged co-conspirators, Fred Roland "Butch" Franklin.

"Because of the relative short turnaround time for Franklin's trial,
coupled with the fact that Franklin was indicted for the most part to
encourage him to cooperate against Neely (which he did not do) , Richmond
is having to put together Franklin's trial preparation on short notice.
Richmond is interested in any information Cleveland can develop indicating
Franklin was selling/distributing cocaine, especially during the period
from approximately June 1987 through March 1989," the document reads.

Franklin was also indicted on drug charges, though the charges were later
dropped and he was charged with the misdemeanor of failure to file an
income tax return. Franklin pleaded guilty to that charge. In an order
issued in April, Kiser cited this memorandum as an indication that Neely's
allegations had a factual basis.

U.S. Attorney Ruth Plagenhoef declined to comment on the case, since the
government is waiting for a hearing on the evidence. That hearing has yet
to be scheduled.

Neely has also argued that of the more than 2,000 FBI documents the
prosecution turned over in total, the items numbered 1 through 65 were
withheld from him until the hearing last month. Those documents contained
FBI interviews and field notes pertaining to Donald Kimbler - the
government's key witness in Neely's 1993 trial.

In a footnote to a court document, federal prosecutors said it was an
"oversight" on the part of the U.S. Attorney's Office that that set of
documents had not been turned over sooner.

But the government has also argued in the past that Neely should have had
access to these documents before, as federal prosecutors made them
available to Neely at the U.S. Attorney's Office before his 1993 trial.

Neely has also raised questions about Customs documents from a 1989 trip to
the Bahamas that he said could help exonerate him. He said those documents
were also withheld from him, but the prosecution has argued that the
documents weren't germane to his conviction.

Neely and federal prosecutors are awaiting a hearing on the evidence, after
which Kiser will decide whether a new trial for Neely is warranted.

In the meantime, he's back home with his mother.

"But if he doesn't win his own case," June Neely said, "he's not going to
fall over and play dead."