EDITORIAL: TRAVESTY OF JUSTICE

April 3 - In an appalling miscarriage of justice, three men have been
held in federal prison for five months after wiretap evidence against
them was disallowed.

In all, these men have been in prison since they were arrested in
December 1998.

These suspects and six others were accused of selling cocaine in a
case in which the FBI used wiretaps illegally. Some of the six pleaded
guilty; some were released on bond.

But people's telephones cannot be tapped until agents exhaust all
other means of investigation: talking to the suspect while wearing a
recording device, tailing the person, talking to the suspect's friends
and associates, conducting surveillance and even examining the
suspect's trash.

The FBI used none of those tactics, however, before commencing use of
a wiretap. That fact alone was sufficient for U.S. District Judge
Walker Miller to disallow all the wiretap evidence last November. The
wiretap, the most intrusive of all investigative tools, constituted
almost all the evidence in this case.

Yet the U.S. Attorney's Office appealed that ruling - and refused to
let the three men go free on bond, despite the fact that almost all
evidence against them had been suppressed. So Joe Willie Hightower,
Clifford Arrington and Lorenzo Martinez were left in their federal
prison cells in Englewood.

The prosecutors lost their appeal Tuesday, when a three-judge panel of
the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld Miller's
decision supressing the wiretap.

And Friday, finally, Hightower was released. Martinez should be freed
today or tomorrow, his attorney says. Arrington won't be let go,
however, because he faces other charges of cocaine
distribution.

The U.S. Attorney's Office may ask the full circuit court to review
the case. We would hope not. We would hope these prosecutors have
gotten the message by now. And we would hope that they never again
keep people imprisoned after the prosecutorial evidence is supressed.

It is frightening that the FBI would conduct such a slipshod
investigation. And it is a travesty that the U.S. Attorney's Office
would leave men in prison for months after their case has been gutted.
We expect better of federal law officers.