FAKE-DRUG SCANDAL HAS LINGERING EFFECTS

As Grand Jury Works to Assign Blame, DA Enacts Safeguards

A scheme involving at least three Dallas police informants to plant
bogus drugs on innocent immigrants in exchange for snitch pay started
to unravel about this time last year.

Lab tests showed that several big drug busts made by the Dallas Police
Department involved nothing but chalk or only traces of illicit
substances. Prosecutors and defense attorneys were asking questions.
Reporters were nosing around. The problem was about to go public.

Twelve months later, a federal grand jury is hearing witnesses'
testimony. Two undercover Dallas narcotics officers remain on paid
leave. Three of their former informants have pleaded guilty to civil
rights charges in the cases.

But the biggest question - who's to blame - remains unanswered.

"I place the full blame on the Dallas Police Department, the narcotics
department, because they were not supervising these rogue informants,"
says Richard Carrizales, a longtime Dallas defense lawyer. "There was
no double-checking of what ... [the officers] were doing, and you had
these informants just out of control. And, so, the more busts they
brought, the more arrests they brought. The narcotics officers were
just fat and happy."

Dallas police spokeswoman Janice Houston declined to comment, citing
the ongoing FBI investigation. Until the federal probe wraps up, she
says, any comments about what might have happened amount to
"speculation." Members of the narcotics unit have signed letters
agreeing not to talk about the cases. At Dallas County's criminal
courthouse, where prosecutors threw out more than 80 drug cases, the
district attorney says he has implemented new safeguards to rapidly
identify bad cases and to prevent anything like the fake-drug scandal
from recurring.

District Attorney Bill Hill also says he's planning a review in 2003
of all policies - in every area of his office - to ensure that there
are no shortcomings that could be exploited.

As the fake-drug scandal unfolded, authorities said that as many as 10
cases involved phony drugs; about 14 others contained a sprinkling of
real narcotics among larger amounts of bogus drugs.

Many of the targets were undocumented Mexican immigrants who spoke
little English. Hispanic community leaders say they believe that the
scheme would have been discovered sooner if it weren't for the racial
and socioeconomic factors the victims shared.

"The people who were getting charged were not voters; they're not
citizens, so if they complained, they didn't have a great voice," says
Dallas defense lawyer Juan Sanchez. "When they complained, people
didn't listen."

Prosecutors tossed the remaining cases in the interest of justice,
deeming them tainted by the involvement of two suspended Dallas police
officers or their discredited informants.

The taint bled into Mr. Hill's re-election campaign, where he won a
second term despite his opponents' focus on the scandal. Critics
complained that Mr. Hill did not act quickly enough to identify and
stop prosecution of the sullied cases. At the Police Department, where
officials have refused to talk about the cases, Chief Terrell Bolton
and other supervisors have faced less public scrutiny.

Meanwhile, in Dallas County's drug courts, prosecutors' conviction
rates remained unchanged this year compared to the previous year. Last
year, prosecutors in the organized crime division - which handles
cases involving 4 grams or more of drugs - had an 82 percent trial
conviction rate and a 98.6 percent overall conviction rate, including
guilty pleas. This year, prosecutors had an 82.3 percent trial
conviction rate and a 98.5 percent overall conviction rate.

Lessons learned

Mr. Hill says he and his prosecutors have learned much. "We've
certainly learned that just because systems worked in the past, that
doesn't mean they'll hold up in the future," he says, referring to the
office's previous policy of not testing drugs before suspects were
indicted. Drugs had been tested only when a case went to trial or a
defendant requested it.

"Quite frankly, we never really thought there was a potential problem
because it had been working so well for many, many years."

He acknowledges that his office should have found the problem cases
sooner: "It took too long, and I'll admit that," he says.

Among the changes Mr. Hill made was to require every police agency to
provide the district attorney's office with each confidential
informant's identification number. A prosecutor now monitors every
drug case involving a confidential informant to watch for patterns and
problems.

A different prosecutor monitors all drug lab reports. The prosecutor
compares the lab reports to the field tests to ensure that the type of
drugs cited by arresting officers matches the substance found in lab
tests.

Mr. Hill says his office reviewed every case filed by Senior Cpl. Mark
Delapaz and Officer Eddie Herrera, who remain on paid leave from the
Police Department. The previous cases of Senior Cpl. David Larsen were
reviewed because he accompanied Cpl. Delapaz and Officer Herrera on
drug busts made with the discredited informants, Mr. Hill says.

The three officers' past cases, which Mr. Hill estimates to be in the
hundreds, were then turned over to the FBI, he says.

Mr. Hill says he's confident that all the bad cases have been
discovered and rectified.

However, at least four men convicted with the help of Enrique Alonso,
the central discredited informant, remain in prison. Two others - a
man and a woman - were allowed out of prison while an appeals court
reviews their cases. Mr. Alonso signed an affidavit saying he perjured
himself to help convict one man. He has not publicly admitted lying in
other cases.

Mr. Hill says the scandal saddened him and further strengthened his
resolve to improve his office. He bristles at criticism that he has
acted indifferently or been unapologetic about defendants who were
unjustly prosecuted.

"I'm sorry if people had drugs planted on them and they came down here
and pled guilty, unbeknownst to us it was fake drugs," Mr. Hill says.
"I feel sorry for those people who went to jail, and I wish they
hadn't gone. ... A lot of people don't think it's enough for me to
truly feel sorry for those people. I think they expect me to admit to
something that's not true.

"I'm very sorry for these people who had their lives turned upside
down because of these unscrupulous, corrupt informants."

After the scandal erupted, Mr. Hill's office began requiring that all
drug evidence be submitted for lab tests before a suspect was indicted
- - something standard in many district attorneys' offices, including in
neighboring Tarrant County.

Jails, labs clogged

As a result, many defense lawyers say, the Dallas County Jail and
lab-testing system quickly became clogged. Some of the problem, they
say, was because suspects with minor cases - those who would have
received probation because they were caught with small amounts of
drugs for personal use - could not raise bail. Mr. Carrizales was
among a group of Mexican-American community leaders who spoke with Mr.
Hill about six months ago about the problem, encouraging the district
attorney to find a way to speed the process.

Mr. Hill says his office is working out the legal kinks for a process
in which drug defendants could waive their lab tests and plead guilty.
The district attorney's office would still test the drugs as a
fail-safe measure.

Ryan Brown, Dallas County budget director, says that after the
drug-testing policy change, his office saw an increase in the jail
population whose cases were pending before the grand jury. But, he
says, his office had no way to specify how much extra money was spent.

"The aggregate cost per inmate is minimal," Mr. Brown says. "What we
saw was a population growing; by virtue of it growing, we knew
additional dollars were being spent, so we said, 'Is there a way to
mitigate this?' "

The answer, officials determined, was to add another laboratory
analyst position at the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences so
more drug tests could be performed and to add a post at the district
attorney's office to monitor and expedite lab testing.

"If somebody's in jail, we put them to the front of the list," Mr.
Brown says.

The changes were made as part of the 2003 budget, which took effect in
October, and a benefit already has been seen, officials say. The jail
population has started to decrease to more "historic" numbers, Mr.
Brown says.

Meanwhile, some defense lawyers say they've seen improvements.

Mr. Sanchez says that while he's seen an improvement with Dallas
police better corroborating their drug cases with video and audio
evidence, he's still concerned that the Police Department is using
questionable informants. Mr. Alonso, the informant at the heart of the
scandal, was an undocumented immigrant who investigators say was using
a false Social Security number.

Prosecutors "are very careful in analyzing their cases," says Mr.
Sanchez, the Dallas defense lawyer. "If they see something odd,
they're going to let you know about it. They're very forthcoming with
discovery. They don't want to be accused of hiding the ball. The
public outcry is at least making them more skeptical. I will give them
credit for that."