13 CASES COLLAPSE AFTER DISCLOSURE OF INFORMANT OFFENSES

An undercover narcotics investigation touted by the government as a
significant blow to a notorious haven for drug dealing has been left
in tatters after damning revelations about an informant, among them
that he was using the same sort of drugs he was buying for the police.

The U.S. attorney's office in the District said it has dropped or is
preparing to drop charges against 13 of 23 people charged in a
five-month investigation in and around the Woodland Terrace public
housing complex in Southeast Washington. The cases collapsed less than
five months after the arrests were announced.

During the investigation, while working for another police unit
conducting a separate operation, the informant crashed an unmarked
police car into a moving car and several parked cars, according to
court documents. But he was not charged, despite the considerable
damage and the fact that he didn't have a driver's license.

Little of the information about the informant's conduct during the
investigation or his checkered history working for the police was
initially turned over to attorneys for those charged in the Woodland
Terrace investigation.

By the time it was provided, some defendants had already pleaded
guilty. Other defendants were about to go on trial when the U.S.
attorney's office made the disclosures.

On Friday in D.C. Superior Court, three defendants who had entered
guilty pleas were allowed to withdraw them, and the charges were
dismissed by prosecutors.

Channing Phillips, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office, said
that prosecutors were not aware of the problems with the informant
when the first defendants pleaded guilty but that the office acted
promptly once it learned of the issues.

The unraveling of the cases has renewed questions about how police use
paid informants and how prosecutors determine which evidence they must
turn over to the defense in the early stages.

The problems were first reported in the Legal Times.

Prosecutors are required to turn over information favorable to a
defendant, such as a statement from a witness implicating another
person in the crime or details of a plea agreement of a person
cooperating with the government.

Defense attorneys in the District have complained that the U.S.
attorney's office is delinquent in turning over such
information.

The disclosure of such information, or the failure to promptly provide
it, is a near-constant source of contention in D.C. Superior Court
between the defense bar and prosecutors. It can be important in cases
in which police and prosecutors are relying on information from people
who are being paid by the government or who have pending criminal
cases, or both.

Superior Court judges periodically have rebuked the U.S. attorney's
office for not turning over such material. In this case, the U.S.
attorney's office said it did not receive the information from police
until it was too late.

For the Woodland Terrace investigation, the consequences were
colossal.

Despite its location -- about a block from the D.C. police
department's 7th District station -- Woodland Terrace was a hot spot
for people selling cocaine, PCP and marijuana.

Last spring, the 7th District's Focused Mission Unit embarked on an
ambitious effort to rout out drug dealers there. Woodland, a 234-unit
low-rise complex, is bounded by Ainger, Bruce, Raynolds and Langston
places. Neighborhood residents had said last fall that the police
attention made a difference in ridding the area of the drug
trafficking.

Working with the D.C. Housing Authority Police, the U.S. attorney's
office and other agencies, D.C. police set up dozens of drug buys
during the investigation. Many were made by undercover officers, but
many others were made by the informant, according to
prosecutors.

It was not until the first cases were about to go before a jury that
some of the most damaging new information was handed over to defense
attorneys.

Donna Beasley, an attorney for one defendant, said she learned not
long before the Jan. 10 trial date that years earlier the informant
was thrown out of the witness protection program. Then, on the day of
trial, the prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney George P. Varghese,
told her that the informant had not been licensed to drive when he
crashed the police car.

The revelation prompted Judge Craig S. Iscoe to postpone the trial.
But it wasn't the only notable disclosure that day, Beasley said.
While the judge was deciding what to do, Beasley said she was told
that the informant had identified someone other than her client in a
photo identification of the suspects -- evidence she says was as
potentially exculpatory as anything the government could have given
her.

On Tuesday, the charges against her client -- and three others
planning to go to trial -- were dismissed.

"Yes, they did the right thing by dismissing it," Beasley said, "but
what's going on?"