OFFICER'S LIES SINK 2 CASES

Federal prosecutors have dismissed two cocaine cases and scaled back a
third because an undercover police officer lied about his information
source in a sworn statement requesting search warrants.

Two of the case dismissals came in the days before and after the San
Antonio Police Department stiffened its penalty for officers caught lying
in the line of duty.

Although department leaders said the officer's conduct did not prompt the
policy change, they acknowledge that Officer Carlos Ancira's misstatement,
however well-intentioned, is the kind they hope to deter by making lying,
once generally punished by a 15-day suspension, a firing offense.

Known in police slang as "testilying," officers lying under oath have
scandalized more than one city's police department in recent years and,
some fear, have bruised the credibility of badge-wearers everywhere.

San Antonio has remained untouched but for a few instances, prosecutors
say. In contrast to scandals such as that in Los Angeles' Rampart Division,
where officers are accused of planting evidence, the recent episode in San
Antonio is described by authorities and experts as relatively benign.

All the same, it illustrates that even seemingly innocuous falsehoods can
cripple criminal cases.

"It was a stupid mistake," said U.S. Attorney Bill Blagg, who oversees
federal prosecutions from San Antonio to El Paso.

Although depicted as well-meaning and relatively minor, the false statement
prompted a federal judge to alert police brass. It also led to a transfer
to night patrol for Ancira, a seven-year member of the San Antonio Police
Department.

He escaped formal disciplinary action because the case reached the chief's
desk after the deadline for taking action, Assistant Police Chief Albert
Ortiz said.

Ancira did not respond to an interview request communicated through the San
Antonio Police Officers Association. Department policy forbids officers
from publicly discussing disciplinary matters, a police spokesman said.

The controversy sprouted from two search warrants Ancira applied for on
July 11, 2000. Those warrants led to separate arrests and indictments
against Robert Steen and a friend, Bobby Phillips Jr.

Three months later, the case against Steen abruptly unraveled at a court
hearing when the woman who Ancira claimed was his confidential information
source testified she had never talked to Ancira about any previous case.

The informant was Steen's common-law wife, who in a jealous snit had
pointed police to what she said was her husband's cocaine, officers said.
But, after spawning the case when she was angry, the wife essentially
destroyed it after she reconciled with Steen, the father of her child and
whose name she bears on a tattoo.

Court testimony showed that, in requesting search warrants, Ancira had
sworn he learned of the cocaine from someone who had given him reliable
information before. In fact, Ancira never spoke to Steen's wife before
investigating the case against Steen.

At one point, U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia interrupted the hearing to
question Ancira in his chambers, emerging about a half-hour later
apparently agitated, observers said. The judge later notified Assistant
Chief Ortiz about the misleading warrant.

By distorting the source of his tip, legal experts say, Ancira robbed the
magistrate of the ability to judge the tip's reliability — an essential
ingredient in a search warrant that gives police the power, if necessary,
to break down doors.

Experts differ on whether Ancira could have obtained the warrant if he told
the whole truth: that his information came secondhand from a colleague. But
the question is academic; he didn't.

In court, Ancira said he did not believe his statement amounted to, in the
prosecutor's words, "an untruth." He later told internal affairs
investigators that he obscured the facts to protect the informant's
identity, Ortiz said.

Ortiz and prosecutors said that was a shortsighted reason because the
informant's name would eventually have come out in court.

"These shortcuts, or thinking that you can take these shortcuts — this is
exactly the kind of conduct we would like to prevent in the future," Ortiz
said. "That was the main thrust of the chief's raising the bar (on the
penalty for lying)."

Days after the court hearing, prosecutors dropped Steen's case rather than
defend Ancira's warrant, said Richard Durbin, chief of the U.S. Attorney's
criminal division.

"To put it in its best light, it was sloppy," Durbin said.

Last month, federal prosecutors also dropped the related charge against
Phillips. Another count is still pending against Phillips but it is in
jeopardy because of an unrelated search-warrant dispute. Furthermore, the
government on Feb. 8 dismissed another case involving a half-ounce of crack
cocaine.

No one suspected Ancira lied in the third case, but he was the only witness
to the alleged drug deal, Durbin said. Prosecutors feared that, tainted by
the Steen and Phillips cases, his credibility might not survive
cross-examination by defense lawyers.

Durbin said the U.S. Attorney's Office has found few instances of federal
cases dismissed due to law enforcement officers lying. The previous one in
San Antonio occurred about five years ago, he said.

Similarly, First Assistant District Attorney Michael Bernard said he
believes local prosecutors had dealt with only one such incident since the
current administration took office in 1999. Police internal affairs
investigated, he said, and the officer resigned.

From one perspective, the recent episode offers a bleak bottom line.
Ancira hobbled his own work. As a result, either drug traffickers
sidestepped severe prosecutions or two people suffered legally baseless
detention and accusations.

What prevailed is less tangible but hardly trivial, said Geary Reamey, a
St. Mary's University criminal law professor.

The prosecutions, he said, bowed to the Fourth Amendment guarantee that the
government can't use its power recklessly to break down doors and search
under mattresses.