POLICE DOUBTS CAST A SHADOW OVER PUERTAS DRUG VERDICT

LATE LAST year, an Oakland County jury convicted Joseph Puertas of
trafficking in cocaine.

Now Oakland County Circuit Judge Colleen O'Brien, who presided over the
trial and sentenced the 72-year-old bar operator to 14 years in prison, has
in her possession a 31-page Michigan State Police report that casts doubt
on much of the testimony prosecutors relied on to convict Puertas.

The report, which was completed in late September but withheld from the
judge, the jury and Puertas' lawyers until last month, identifies six
police officers who questioned the credibility of the state's case against
Puertas in interviews with a State Police investigator.

Two senior officers, including the then-commander of the state's Narcotics
Enforcement Team, are quoted suggesting that the prosecution's star witness
against Puertas was unreliable.

The report also reveals that the Oakland County Sheriff's sergeant who
supervised the Puertas case told his superiors that "some of the
information within the investigation was not really the way things were
observed" and urged prosecutors to strike a plea deal.

None of this reached jurors, some of whom might have been interested to
know why the man who ran the Puertas investigation was so keen to avoid
testifying, or why his superiors dismissed his informant as a liar.

Fundamental fairness -- not to mention the applicable case law -- requires
a new trial in which Puertas' attorneys have the opportunity to question
officers about the misgivings they confessed to State Police investigators.
What is unclear is whether O'Brien has the political courage to start the
ball rolling.

For an elected officeholder, there is little percentage in rushing to
Puertas' aid.

Last year's conviction is Puertas' second for trafficking in narcotics. In
the 1980s, he spent eight years in prison for conspiring to deliver 225-650
grams of cocaine.

The controversy that surrounds Puertas' most recent conviction began in
January 1998, when a search of 14 businesses and homes owned by Puertas or
his family members turned up more than $1.75 million in cash, but no drugs.

Puertas and his family concede some of the money wasn't reported as income,
but maintain that it was derived from bar sales and other legitimate
activities. But prosecutors insist the cash and other family assets are the
fruit of narcotics sales, and they are pursuing a civil forfeiture suit.

Because a reversal of Puertas' criminal conviction would imperil their
efforts to keep his money, prosecutors have resisted demands for a new
trial, or for Puertas' release on appellate bond, with unusual ferocity.
Any judge who calls the state to account for its failure to disclose
evidence will doubtless face accusations that he or she is in the pocket of
a twice-convicted drug dealer.

But the primary victims of this train wreck are O'Brien and her jury, who
were constrained to sit in judgment of Puertas without benefit of all the
material evidence.

O'Brien, who has been asked to rule whether prosecutors had an obligation
to disclose the damaging State Police report before Puertas' trial, has one
last opportunity to set justice back on course.

It remains to be seen whether she and others in Michigan's judiciary can
summon the gumption to do what is right, or only the reflex to do what is
easy.