WITH SNITCHES' AID, FEDERAL CASES MADE

The federal government gave James Pratt little choice: Commit the ultimate
betrayal against his motorcycle-gang brothers, the Sons of Silence, or sit
in prison and wait to die.

Defense attorney Tim McCarthy spelled out Pratt's reason for becoming a snitch.

"You're looking to get out of jail, get your lung transplant by any way
possible?" McCarthy asked.

"Yeah," the witness answered flatly. "I wouldn't mind living."

Testimony from a dozen snitches such as Pratt damned a wealthy accountant
and two aging bikers who were accused in U.S. District Court in Des Moines
of conspiring to deal methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana. After a
seven-week trial, Russell Schoenauer, Robert Norman and Pelayo Jose Cuervo
were convicted last month of numerous drug charges, largely on the word of
prison inmates who, like the ailing inmate, had much to gain for their
testimony.

An age-old criminal justice tradition, snitching offers most federal drug
prisoners their only hope of early release under the stiff mandatory prison
sentences passed by Congress nearly two decades ago. Growing use of such
bargaining with drug offenders has resulted in thousands more convictions
across the country, but at the cost of letting other criminals go free
sooner and creating an incentive to lie.

Prosecutors used their powerful and sometimes controversial discretion
under the nation's drug laws to free Pratt, a twice-convicted
methamphetamine dealer, hours after he testified for the government. At
least eight other prisoners, several of them career criminals, became
eligible to have years knocked off their sentences under agreements reached
before the trial began.

Judge Robert Pratt, who presided over the trial and is no relation to James
Pratt, said the parade of snitches used to build the prosecution's case was
not uncommon in his courtroom.

"I think all judges are amazed at how often jurors believe the testimony of
convicted criminals," he said. "The thing is, you can't get convictions
without them. And yet, do you want to live in a snitch culture? That's the
government's policy."

The judge said his worst fear is that drug offenders plead guilty to crimes
they didn't commit rather than risk conviction under what he called the
federal system's "draconian" drug laws.

U.S. Attorney Steve Colloton praised his office's handling of the case,
saying the three guilty verdicts closed the final chapter of a motorcycle
club's lawlessness in Iowa.

But defense attorneys said the high-profile case also raised an important
question about the trade-offs being made to achieve victory in big federal
drug cases today. The government won, they conceded, but at what cost?

Extensive Probe

A decade in the making, the United States vs. Schoenauer et al. involved
roughly a dozen law enforcement agencies, 25,000 pages of documents and
interviews, 1,200 wiretapped phone conversations, and scores of photographs
taken from the ground and air.

Authorities seized, through search warrants and subpoenas, enough financial
records, guns, correspondence, address books, photos, leather jackets and
biker memorabilia to fill a bank vault.

A case so vigorously investigated might have been a slam dunk but for one
obvious hole, defense attorneys said.

"It was all about drugs, firearms and money, but there were no drugs, no
(illegal) firearms and no money," said James Martin Davis, one of the
Midwest's top criminal defense lawyers, whom Schoenauer recruited from Omaha.

Four years of tips from a paid spy in Schoenauer's office, financial
sleuthing by experts trained to detect money-laundering and fraud, hours of
clandestine recordings, and searches throughout central Iowa yielded
several mysteries but no concrete evidence of widespread drug dealing.

The Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation pulled
out of the investigation before prosecutors charged Schoenauer and his
co-defendants, Norman and Cuervo, in a conspiracy case, Davis said.

"It was wishful thinking," Davis said. "They wanted to have a big organized
crime case in Des Moines. But this isn't Miami. It isn't Phoenix, and it is
not New York or Boston."

Drug agents who had followed the Sons of Silence for almost a decade
thought otherwise. To build their case, they turned to drug informants,
including several already behind bars who had signed agreements to
cooperate with authorities. Several of the witnesses were compelled to
testify before a grand jury in exchange for possible sentence reductions.

Colloton, the U.S. attorney, said it was not unusual for such a case to be
built largely on the testimony of other convicted drug offenders.
Lower-rung dealers are crucial in implicating their leaders, he said.

Drug laws allow prosecutors to offer sentence reductions and immunity from
prosecution to those willing to turn against their drug networks, sometimes
at great personal risk.

"Without that process, those at the highest level could not be convicted,"
Colloton said.

Critics and national advocacy groups for years have railed against the
federal system for penalizing drug offenders who fail to cooperate with
authorities.

In U.S. district courts, where many of the largest cases land, prosecutors
often charge people with numerous crimes, many of which are dropped when
defendants agree to become informants or testify against their drug networks.

Serious federal drug charges carry stiff mandatory sentences of 10 years to
life that require at least 85 percent of the term to be served. With few
exceptions, the only way for convicted drug offenders to reduce their
sentences is to cooperate with the government in the prosecution of others.

In Iowa's Southern District, the consequences for drug crimes are even more
severe: The average prison sentence for trafficking is almost 10 years,
roughly four years longer than the national average. Almost 96 percent of
those convicted in the southern half of Iowa plead guilty before trial.

Information Is Key

Eric Sterling, head of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, a
Washington, D.C., think tank, said one of the biggest problems with current
drug laws is that sentences are manipulated based on the information that
offenders provide, with little regard to snitches' culpability.

Critics say the rigidity of the sentencing system also encourages drug
offenders to lie or exaggerate testimony, a common problem across the country.

"The only tests that are used now are the oath before God," Sterling said.
"Among inmates, the fear of prosecution for lying is almost unheard of."

Although all nine of the men originally charged in the Schoenauer- Norman
conspiracy were accused of serious drug crimes, prosecutors' deal-making
before the trial suggested Schoenauer was the primary target, defense
attorneys said.

Five of the alleged co-conspirators pleaded guilty before the Jan. 14
trial. All were offered deals by prosecutors for their cooperation that
resulted in dozens of charges being dropped.

Norman was offered a similar plea deal despite being charged as a kingpin,
his attorney said.

Cuervo was never approached about a plea agreement, but that wasn't
surprising, said Joe Bertogli, the biker's lawyer.

"My client had nothing to offer against Schoenauer," he said.

Likewise, Schoenauer was never offered a deal, his attorney said.

Wearing shaggy beards and thinning ponytails, the posse of middle-aged drug
dealers was flown by the U.S. Marshals Service from prisons throughout the
Midwest. The witnesses in waiting were housed, some since before
Thanksgiving, at the Polk County Jail at a total cost of almost $50,000.

Most were Sons of Silence members who were serving lengthy sentences with
no chance of parole.

Together, the bikers' testimony provided a glimpse of the underworld that
had led drug agents to pursue Sons chapters across Iowa. The leather-vested
nomads had fanned out across the country on club- sponsored runs, guzzling
beer, racing motorcycles, sometimes dealing drugs to pay their way.

Above all, the fraternity despised snitches, witnesses said. Turncoats
within the club had been beaten, even gunned down.

Norman and Cuervo were the aging leftovers from Iowa's crackdown on the
easy riders. A 1998 racketeering case left almost a dozen Cedar Falls- area
Sons facing old age behind bars. The two tight-lipped bikers had been
fingered as dealers but had eluded arrest until their biker acquaintances
agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

Nearly all of the prisoners who testified at the trial admitted that they
hoped to have their sentences reduced by cooperating with the government. A
majority had seen dramatic reductions for previous cooperation.

The witnesses described using drugs, hiding drugs or shipping drugs at
various times through the 1990s. When asked for specifics, their memories
were often foggy.

Several could not remember what year alleged drug transactions took place.
They told the jury they had difficulty remembering details, including,
sometimes, previous sworn testimony.

Bertogli, McCarthy and Davis said they had little ammunition with which to
fight the prisoners' claims.

The rough dates and vagueness of the allegations made them virtually
impossible to disprove. Some of the witnesses appeared to embellish
previous accounts made before grand juries, the attorneys said. A few were
called chronic liars by other witnesses. Some had admitted lying to the
FBI, grand juries or police.

Steven Henry, who had never met Schoenauer, said he was charged in the
conspiracy even though he was not involved. The 56-year-old retired Sons
member told jurors he pleaded guilty to a reduced charge in the case rather
than face numerous charges investigators had lodged against him.

Pleading not guilty and going to trial meant risking a stiff prison sentence.

"You didn't want to go to trial and run the risk of being found guilty even
though you're not guilty. Is that right?" Davis asked him.

"That's right," Henry testified.

Like Henry and most of the other conspirators, witness James Pratt faced a
possible sentence of 10 years to life if convicted. He was allowed to walk
away under a last-minute deal his lawyer negotiated with prosecutors.

Diagnosed in 1999 with a rare and terminal disease, Pratt learned shortly
after his arrest that he could not progress on a lung donor list while
behind bars. Pratt agreed to plead guilty of two felonies; 26 other charges
were dropped.

Over three days, he offered recent and credible-sounding accounts of his
meth use with Schoenauer, implicating the accountant in drug deals
involving Norman.

Less than three hours after he finished testifying, the twice-convicted
meth dealer was free. The terms of his release were sealed under court
order, as they are in most such agreements.

Week Of Deliberation

The jury took seven days to reach a verdict, twice deadlocking on the
charges against Schoenauer. In the end, Cuervo and Norman were convicted of
every charge against them. Schoenauer was found guilty of distributing
methamphetamine and conspiracy, but he was deemed not guilty on the kingpin
charge. The jury said several of his properties should be seized through
forfeiture.

Interviewed after the verdict, Colloton said he had no reservations about
his office's handling of the case. Norman, a drug kingpin, was behind bars.
All three men were guilty of distributing drugs.

Ultimately, the U.S. attorney said, Congress makes the drug laws that
dictate how the system works.

The jury, he said, "is the arbiter of the credibility and the strength of
evidence in our judicial system."

Prosecutors Cliff Wendel and Lester Paff declined to be interviewed.
However, during a break in the trial, Wendel conceded that the case likely
would not have gone to court before Congress enacted the drug laws that
transformed the federal system.

"Before, either we had the drugs or we didn't," he said. "Now, this is 85
to 90 percent of what we do."