VIGNALI CASE BUILT ON INFORMANTS, WIRETAPS

Commutation: Dealer who received controversial clemency was portrayed
at his trial as a key financier of a cocaine pipeline.

MINNEAPOLIS--The 1994 case against Carlos Vignali, whom President
Clinton freed last month after appeals from prominent Los Angeles
politicians, was built on the testimony of informants and federal
wiretaps, which convinced a jury that he had provided large sums of
cash to purchase cocaine for sale in Minnesota.

About 800 pounds of cocaine were mailed in the early 1990s from
Southern California to Minneapolis. In one telephone recording,
Vignali discussed a successful drug deal with two of his partners,
boasting: "It's going to be like that. Ain't never going to be a
problem."

Later, talking about 15 pounds of cocaine that was missing, Vignali
complained: "Get that right back. . . . Kick anybody down. You guys
should roll right up in there and get it."

The trial narrative, reviewed by The Times on Wednesday, was
contained in boxes of trial transcripts and other court documents at
the federal courthouse here. It reveals a government case built
almost entirely upon wiretaps and the testimony of informants, who
turned against Vignali in hopes of winning lighter sentences. The
government portrayed Vignali as one of the key financiers of the
cocaine pipeline from Los Angeles to Minneapolis. He was described as
a young man flush with cash, who clinched his deals in cell phone
conversations and sought to meld with tough-talking drug hustlers.

Among those who lobbied on Vignali's behalf were former Assembly
Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, U.S. Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los
Angeles), former U.S. Rep. Esteban Torres and Roman Catholic Cardinal
Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles. Most asked for further review of
Vignali's case, though some went further. Villaraigosa, for instance,
claimed that Vignali had been wrongly convicted. Villaraigosa and
Mahony recently have expressed regret at involving themselves in the
case.

Horacio Vignali, father of Carlos Vignali and a well-connected Los
Angeles businessman, had asked them to contact the White House on his
son's behalf, most of the letter writers said.

Of the 30 defendants indicted on charges of involvement in the drug
ring, which converted the cocaine powder from Los Angeles to crack
cocaine in Minneapolis, all but one were convicted or pleaded guilty.
The jury convicted Vignali on three counts of conspiracy and cocaine
distribution and acquitted him of a fourth count.

While prosecutors have said that Vignali was a central figure in the
conspiracy, U.S. District Judge David S. Doty, who has criticized
Clinton's decision to commute Vignali's sentence, cautioned at the
1995 sentencing that he was not "an organizer, leader or manager."

Still, the judge sentenced Vignali to 15 years, one of the harshest
sentences handed down in the case. Clinton commuted the sentence
after Vignali had served six years. In an interview Wednesday, Doty
said that Vignali "provided funds to the conspiracy, provided places
and was involved in the direct transfers. . . . He was a big player.
He was one of the top two or three defendants."

Andrew Dunne, the assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted Vignali and
who advised the Justice Department against commuting his sentence,
said that "he was clearly a key player. . . . He never said, 'I'm
sorry.' "

Vignali, who testified in his own defense, said that he thought he
was loaning money to friends for an investment with a group of
basketball players. He and his father, who also testified, said that
his son had had much of the money since childhood, when he would
lovingly iron hundred-dollar bills and keep the crisp cash stacked
neatly in his bedroom closet.

"I don't understand," Carlos Vignali said on the witness stand. "What
do you mean, drug money?"

Dunne told the jury that this account was absurd. "I submit to you
that's the most preposterous story I have every heard," he said.

His father testified that ready cash had always been a central part
of the way he had done business in the auto body shop industry, one
of several of his business ventures, including real estate.

"Cash is a way of making money when nobody else can," said Horacio
Vignali, who bragged about his wealth. Since his son's arrest, he has
contributed $160,000 to federal and state politicians in California
and elsewhere.

"If I have the right amount of cash and I go to an auction, or I
happen to see somebody with a for-sale sign on the street and I pull
them over and we start dealing about the price, if I have the cash, I
buy the car," the father testified.

"If I don't have the cash, somebody else buys the car. So it gives
you an advantage."

He said of his son: "I treated him like my best friend, my partner,
anything he needed, I would always provide for him, always. It
doesn't matter what, I always provided for him."

The defendant's lawyer, Danny Davis of Los Angeles, told the jury how
Carlos Vignali worked at his father's auto body shop and was more
interested in his girlfriend and pursuing a career in rap music than
in becoming involved with drug dealers far away in Minnesota.

"He is a product of his father's grand energy," Davis said. "He is a
person who deals with everyone who comes in that shop as well. Carlos
Vignali, the client here, is about cars, he is about music and he is
about a girlfriend."

Carlos Vignali was indicted with others in the case in December 1993.
The group consisted largely of Minnesota street characters with gang
nicknames such as J-Bone, Binky and Lepp.

Vignali, a high school dropout, was known as C-Low, though it was a
moniker he denied at trial. On a tape of the phone taps, he and
others involved in the ring referred to drugs as "love." An informant
testified that Vignali bragged about his role in an Eazy-E rap video,
"Easy-E, Only If You Want It."

When prosecutors introduced the video into evidence, saying there was
both a clean and raunchy version, the judge said, "I hope you have
the clean one here."

In the video, Vignali looked daunting, according to Dunne. "He had a
shaved head, goatee, fierce-looking," the prosecutor said.

Vignali was arrested in Los Angeles and released when his father
posted $250,000 bail. He was the only defendant released on bail
during the six-week trial. In the courtroom, he wore nice suits and
appeared clean-cut, with his hair grown out and styled.

At one point, Denise Reilly, Dunne's assistant prosecutor, observed
that Vignali "has been sent to charm school. . . . He's had a
make-over."

Dunne and Reilly outlined the government's case against Vignali.

Dunne told the jury that, even though drugs were not found on
Vignali, he was guilty nonetheless. "Carlos Vignali didn't have to
physically ship [drug] packages to be guilty under the aiding and
abetting law," he said.

He added: "This case is about cocaine and money, lots of cocaine and
lots of money."

There were 50 witnesses in the trial, and some testified that
36-ounce bricks of cocaine were strapped onto people's bodies when
they flew to Minneapolis. Others said that money and drugs were flown
on planes, shipped in the mail or wired via Western Union.

Reilly said that in October 1993, two of the defendants arranged for
6 kilograms, or about 15 pounds, of cocaine to be sent to
Minneapolis. "Those kilograms came from Carlos Vignali," she said.

In his own testimony, Vignali denied any involvement with drugs. Most
of his answers to questions from attorneys were short, blunt and
spare denials.

"Did you knowingly participate, aid or assist anyone in a cocaine
drug transaction?" asked his lawyer, Davis.

Vignali answered, "No, I did not."

He said that he met the other defendants at his father's auto body
shop. "There was a big business deal coming down," he said he was
told, involving some basketball players. He said the visitors wanted
to borrow money from him to invest in the deal.

"I didn't know it was drugs, though," he testified.

He said that at the time he had an interest in a company called
Fellon Records and was pursuing those interests while working at his
father's shop and had no inclination to work with drug dealers.

His father testified that he had owned the shop in downtown Los
Angeles since 1970. He was called to the stand by his son's lawyer,
hoping to show that father and son did quite well at the shop and
that Carlos did not need outside income from drug deals.

Horacio Vignali said that his son "always" shared in the profits. "I
pay him with my own personal checks," the father said. "Sometimes I
pay him two, three, four hundred dollars cash . . . since he was 14
years old."

Horacio Vignali said that he also gave Carlos cash to invest in his
music pursuits.

"Somehow, a son or a daughter, they have the ability of convincing
parents that it is a good deal."

Further, he said, he and his son had been involved in extensive real
estate deals and other ventures, some worth more than $1.5 million.
He said they lived in Malibu near actor Tom Cruise and comedian
Whoopi Goldberg, and later purchased the home of actor Sylvester
Stallone. He put the price of the home then at $7 million.

Horacio Vignali also said that Carlos' older brother, Tony, has had
his own difficulties.

He said Tony left home when he refused to stop using drugs, that "he
was going to do whatever he was going to do." He said Tony had a "big
problem" with drugs and that a daughter, Lisa, had also battled drugs.

His point was that Carlos would have seen firsthand the dangers of drugs.

"You don't want to see him go to jail, do you?" Reilly asked at one point.

"I want to see guilty people go to jail," Horacio Vignali said.

"I asked you if you wanted to see your son go to jail," Reilly persisted.

"No," Vignali said, "I do not."