JUDGE FREES AUSSIE SMUGGLER

SAN FRANCISCO: A convicted Australian drug smuggler has been freed by a US
federal judge who was told of a government program that paid cash to
customs inspectors as a reward for making drug seizures.In a ruling made
public yesterday, US District Judge Vaughn Walker cut more than two years
off the sentence of Michael Sanderson, saying that cash paid to inspectors
amounted to "perverse law enforcement incentives".

Sanderson was arrested in 1996 in San Francisco after two men told customs
agents that Sanderson and another man gave them 17 pounds (7.65 kg) of
cocaine for transport on a flight from San Francisco to Sydney. The men
with the drugs were detained by customs agents before they boarded the
flight at San Francisco International Airport.

Sanderson stood trial and was convicted in 1997. He faced up to eight years
in prison for the conviction, but Walker sentenced him to time served and
freed him to return to Australia. Eight of the 12 customs agents who
testified for the prosecution at Sanderson's trial received cash rewards
for their work on the case.

The judge did not say that the payments themselves led to Sanderson's
acquittal, but said the fact that the payments were concealed undermined
the defence's case because Sanderson's lawyer was not told of the payments
until after the trial ended.

Randolph Dear, Sanderson's attorney, had argued that incentive payments
should be disclosed before trial along with other evidence that might be
used to discredit witness testimony.

Despite Walker's ruling on the Sanderson case, the payment program is still
in place. Last week, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals denied a new trial
for two men convicted in another San Francisco smuggling case where
payments were also made to customs agents.

In reviewing that case, the court ruled that the payment program was "a
system of rewards for legitimate and diversified job performance and not a
down payment for testimony".