Documents Must Be Released

NEELY WINS ACCESS TO FBI DOCUMENTS

Ex-lawyer Keith Neely has been fighting his federal convictions for
eight years. He won a recent round.

Former Christiansburg lawyer Keith Neely has argued since 1993 that he
was railroaded by the prosecution during his trial on drug and money
laundering charges.

In a rare but potentially crucial victory for Neely, who has
petitioned the court for a new trial, a federal judge has ruled that
Neely's case "has not infrequently been visited by evidence of
government misconduct."

Neely was one of the highest-profile defense lawyers in Southwest
Virginia during the 1980s.

Senior U.S. District Judge Jackson Kiser overruled Magistrate Judge
Glen Conrad on appeal and granted Neely's motions for disclosure of
grand jury testimony and other discovery materials. Discovery is the
process during which litigants share with each other evidence they
plan to present at trial. Neely has argued that the prosecution
withheld discovery material that could help exonerate him.

Conrad had previously ruled after hearings in December that Neely
could seek out additional discovery material, but that he would have
to request specific information and state why he wanted it.

But Kiser wrote in an opinion filed March 15 that Neely's requests
were justified.

"I think it is clear that Petitioner's [Neely's] request for
additional disclosures are not of a type induced by paranoia, but
rather have sufficient factual basis to warrant making further
discovery available," Kiser wrote. Kiser's ruling should make more
than 600 FBI documents pertaining to his case available to Neely, said
Max Jenkins, Neely's attorney.

Kiser referenced "internal communication" regarding a 1992 federal
case against a Radford man named Butch Franklin as evidence of
prosecutorial misconduct.

Jenkins said the "internal communication" was an FBI memorandum that
indicated they were going to try to get Franklin to testify against
Neely during his trial. The FBI had alleged that Neely was
distributing drugs for Franklin, a charge both men denied.

When Franklin was arrested on the eve of Neely's trial, Neely's
attorneys said it was a sham indictment, Jenkins said. But federal
prosecutors said Franklin's case had nothing to do with Neely's case,
Jenkins said. Franklin wound up pleading guilty to two misdemeanors,
Jenkins said.

Neely, who is incarcerated on a 10-year sentence in federal prison in
West Virginia, has spent the better part of the last decade fighting
his March 1993 federal conviction. He has been in prison since May
1996.

Neely's appeal of his criminal conviction was denied by the 4th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals in 1996. He got access to the FBI memorandum
after he sued the government in 1998 for withholding documents
pertaining to his case after he requested them under the Freedom of
Information Act.

Kiser ruled in 1999 that the government had to start processing
Neely's request. The FBI sent Neely 795 of the 1,398 of the documents
in his case but withheld about 600 others.

In separate litigation, Neely is seeking a new trial, claiming that he
has uncovered new evidence including prosecutorial misconduct and the
recantation of the testimony of a government witness, Michael
Giacolone. Giacolone, who was a friend of Neely's, wrote a letter to
Kiser saying he only testified against Neely to get leniency in his
own drug case.

The next step is that Kiser has to rule on the prosecution's motion to
dismiss Neely's request for a new trial, Peters said.