FORFEIT AND GO FREE

Some fear system has become 'big money grab'

Ronald Barrett lay barefoot in his jail cell, kicking the door over and
over, screaming and cussing.

He'd been caught running three stop signs and swerving his pickup all over a
rural Ouachita County road. The sheriff's deputies had found the crucial
evidence: methamphetamines, two bags of marijuana and a stack of $10,000 in
cash.

But if Barrett was kicking his cell door the night of May 6, 1995, because
he was worried about a prison sentence, he could have saved his feet the
pain.

Thanks to the way the state's forfeiture laws are applied in an area of
southern Arkansas, Barrett, then 37, walked away with 10 days in the county
jail for drunken driving. His agreement to forfeit $5,000 of the seized cash
brought a promise from the prosecutor's office to drop all drug charges.

Some critics say cases such as Barrett's highlight a major flaw in
forfeiture laws, which allow prosecutors and police to confiscate the cash,
homes and cars of people they suspect of wrongdoing. In fact, questionable
forfeiture deals have earned one Arkansas prosecutor a prison sentence.

An ongoing federal investigation continues into the forfeitures of another
drug task force that handled major drug cases in the six south Arkansas
counties of the state's 13th Judicial District.

Among those expressing concern are some top law enforcement officials, who
caution that the money generated by forfeitures could pervert the judicial
system into a big money grab. The worry is that the zeal to produce revenue
might lead some prosecutors to cut deals for money rather than convicting
drug dealers.

"One's ability to come up with cash money should not be the vehicle that
drives whether they're going to jail or not,'' says I.C. Smith, former
special agent in charge of the FBI in Arkansas. "That's buying one's freedom
and, in the criminal justice system, that violates everything we stand
for.''

UNLUCKY 13TH

The way the state's forfeiture laws have been applied in the 13th Judicial
District has drawn interest from the FBI, which has subpoenaed pile upon
pile of records from the district's drug task force.The task force has
seized untold amounts of money. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette couldn't
determine the amounts seized because FBI investigators have those records
and refused a request to view them.

Up until last year, how much money a defendant could raise and then forfeit
appeared to play a major role in prosecutorial decisions made by those who
ran the task force, empowered to investigate drug crimes in Calhoun,
Cleveland, Columbia, Dallas, Ouachita and Union counties.

Reviews of cases in the 13th Judicial District showed that prosecutors not
only obtained forfeitures on property directly implicated in a crime at the
time of arrest -- such as a car used to transport illegal drugs -- but also
got accused criminals to agree to turn over additional property, often
money, land or homes in their possession, in exchange for more lenient
sentences.

David Butler, the former head of the drug task force who resigned in 1998 to
go back into private law practice, stands by the forfeitures handled by his
office.

"It was my belief that the way to hurt the drug dealers the most was in the
pocket book,'' explains Butler, who paid his way through the University of
Arkansas by working as a security guard.

After earning a degree at the University of Arkansas School of Law in
Fayetteville, Butler went on to become the manager of an oil company. In
1987, he moved to Magnolia and became a deputy prosecutor.

He says he quickly found that the prospect of drug dealers serving time at
boot camps and then getting a quick parole didn't sit well with him. He
decided it was much more effective to give drug defendants probation in
exchange for their jewelry and cash. Butler figured they'd eventually mess
up again and draw a prison sentence anyway.

A REVOLVING DOOR

Barrett had two get-out-of-jail cards. They weren't free, but he still
preferred paying to prison.

Nearly a year after Barrett's first run-in with the law in 1995, Barrett got
arrested again -- this time for bringing 4 ounces of crystal methamphetamine
into Camden in his truck.

And a month after that arrest, Ouachita County Sheriff's deputies stormed
Barrett's house after his bond was revoked. There, they found Barrett with
crystal methamphetamine inside his front pocket and a bag of marijuana.

Barrett got still another pass out of prison.

Butler agreed to recommend no time in prison in exchange for Barrett's
forfeiture of 24 acres of land and a guilty plea of drug possession.

Barrett walked away with a suspended five-year prison sentence. The deal
meant Barrett -- who by then had been caught three times with
methamphetamines -- spent no time behind prison walls.

The Ouachita County Sheriff's office later sold the forfeited land at a
public auction for $9,000. A year earlier, Barrett had bought the same
property for $11,666.

Barrett still marvels at his treatment.

"There's no doubt I was guilty,'' says Barrett, now 41, who admits he
probably would have sold the 4 ounces of methamphetamines the police
confiscated. "I was in possession of drugs when I was in the truck. But all
they wanted was to take all the money I had so I couldn't get a lawyer to
fight anything. There's no doubt. I obviously paid them off."

Butler says he agreed to the deal because he was worried Barrett would use
entrapment as a defense and beat the drug charges. Butler adds that he
believed Barrett would quickly get in trouble again and serve prison time
for a future offense.

L.C. Davis was another whom Butler was sure would mess up again.

While Davis was serving 30 years in prison for pleading guilty to running a
major drug ring, Butler offered him a deal.

"Concerning your request that your sentence be modified and would include a
fine, I would be interested in discussing this with you and your attorney,"
Butler wrote Davis in a letter in August 1994. "How much fine is L.C. Davis
willing to pay? Any fine in this case would have to be substantial."

The letter went on to say: "There would be no discussion of any kind
concerning any reduction in sentence unless you willingly forfeit your
house, vehicles, and anything else that was seized from you."

The letter appears to refer both to property seized at the time of Davis'
arrest as well as to a home and cars still in Davis' possession.

When Davis, then 43, was arrested in 1992, the prosecution filed court
documents arguing he was a major source of crack cocaine in Camden. One of
Davis' alleged recruits had been shot and killed that same year, fleeing
police and reaching for a gun, other court documents show.

Davis refused the offer outlined in Butler's letter, and he remains in
prison.

A PAIR OF CADILLACS

Although the FBI seizure of records prevents the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
from reporting the total cash confiscated in the 13th Judicial District,
other records show that nearly 100 seized cars were in the possession of the
task force when Butler resigned.Task force officers were allowed to drive
those cars home and use them on personal trips. The only caveat: They had to
pay for any gas used for nontask force purposes and stay within a 50-mile
radius of the task force's boundaries.

During an inventory after Butler's resignation, an inventory found six cars,
including two Nissan Maximas, a black Cadillac and a silver Cadillac, stored
at one task force officer's home

Butler, the prosecutor, says he had at least four cars himself during his
tenure.

"One of them looked like a funeral home car,'' Butler says.

But the inventory taken in the wake of Butler's resignation revealed that
nearly 60 percent of the cars that supposedly had been "forfeited" hadn't
gone through the court system.

"Some of the legal work had been done on some of the vehicles, but it had
never been completed,'' says Ken Jones, the new head of the task force and
administrative assistant for the Union County Sheriff's office.

Jones says that after his appointment as the task force's head in April
1998, he faced a devilish time rounding up all the cars, including a Toyota
pickup stored at Butler's office. The cars have since been auctioned off or
returned to their original owners, Jones says.

Butler says the lack of proper paperwork likely stemmed from difficulty in
keeping track of drug prosecutions in six counties. The task force didn't
seize all the cars, he says, and other prosecutors likely failed to keep
track of the case files.

Patricia Beavers, 51, of Camden was one of those who struggled to get her
car back.

She says she let her brother borrow her 1989 Chrysler LeBaron one night in
September 1995. The next thing she knew, it had been seized.

Beavers says she took her title down to Butler to show him the car belonged
to her.

She tried to explain that her brother had borrowed the car and that she knew
nothing about any drug trafficking. According to state law, a forfeiture
can't occur when the property owner had no knowledge of and gave no consent
to the illegal act.

The car finally was returned -- three years later and in such bad shape that
it had to be towed to Beavers' home.

"It didn't have no batteries,'' Beavers says. "The water pump was messed up,
and the motor was busted."

'THE DRIVING FORCE'

Despite the controversies swirling around his 10-year tenure as head of the
drug task force, Butler says he was no lightweight when it came to drug
defendants.

"There are thousands of these cases, and each one of them has different
merits,'' Butler argues. "If you look back, you will see there are very few
places where anybody is tougher on drug cases."

Others disagree.

Michael Hall, a lieutenant for the Arkansas State Police who works south
Arkansas, distanced himself and his officers from the task force when Butler
was in charge.

"I don't like to target people based on their assets,'' Hall says. "Money
seemed to be the driving force, not the drugs."

Hall didn't like factoring forfeitures into the sentencing process. Doing so
means big-time drug dealers, those with money, stand a better chance of
escaping a prison term than their underlings, who can't afford to buy their
freedom, Hall says.

"You've got to think of punishment,'' Hall says. "And giving up money is not
jail. The best thing about punishment is it is swift and sure."

Hall thinks changes are needed in the state's forfeiture laws, starting with
a new provision to bar seizing jurisdictions from keeping any forfeiture
assets. Currently, a seizing agency gets to keep all forfeitures worth less
than $20,000 and up to 80 percent of many forfeitures worth more than that.
That's too much of a temptation, Hall says.

Even some past task force officers now have doubts about some of the
forfeitures they initiated.

"People with money would just buy their way out of it," says David Norwood,
a former 13th Judicial District drug task force officer. "That's just the
way politics works."

He now thinks some of the cash he seized may have been legitimate, even when
the defendants were involved in drug trafficking.

"But the way the law is written, it's there for the taking,'' Norwood says.
"The law needs to be changed. But I don't know where the happy medium is."

He says padding the budgets of local sheriffs was a driving force.

Ouachita County Sheriff Ben Garner says he never let the cash take
precedence over justice.

"If money got seized, I'm sure at some point and times there were cases
where I said, 'Am I going to get any of that money?' " Garner says. "That
happened with me and every other sheriff. But was money ever a more
important factor than conviction? Never. Not with me.''

CREATURE COMFORTS

The 13th Judicial District isn't the first part of Arkansas where it's been
alleged that criminals kept themselves out of prison through forfeitures.

The criminal case of former prosecutor Dan Harmon -- now serving more than
11 years in federal prison for convictions on one count of racketeering,
five drug offenses and three counts of conspiracy to commit extortion --
shows there's a need for safeguards, Smith says.

Harmon's 1998 convictions, some of which are on appeal to the 8th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals, were partially sealed by testimony that he traded
away a drug charge for $10,000 and pressured the ex-wife of a drug defendant
for sex.

Additional testimony linked Harmon, the former prosecuting attorney for the
7th Judicial District, to a $50,000 payoff for dismissal of drug charges and
demands that a jailed drug defendant come up with cash payments.

Such abuses likely aren't isolated, especially considering the troubled
history of some of the drug task forces in Arkansas, Smith says.

"The impulse for most of those task forces seemed to be getting pretty
decent salaries and vehicles and things of that sort,'' Smith says. "Then,
if there was any money left over, they would work cases. They wanted to
satisfy the creature comforts first.''

The FBI has been fighting back, though. Charles Prouty, the current special
agent in charge of the FBI in Arkansas, vows to continue pursuing criminal
charges wherever questionable deal-making occurs.

"It's a total dereliction of a prosecutor's responsibility,'' Prouty says of
forfeiture deals such as Harmon's. "They're supposed to put those people in
jail. They shouldn't take everything from the individual and deprive them of
due process and then deprive the state of a prosecution. It undermines law
enforcement."

'THAT'S EXTORTION'

But forfeitures aid prosecution, Butler says, especially when a prosecutor
strikes deals with defendants because the police investigations in their
cases are deficient.

Such was the case of Steve Paschall, according to Butler, although the
former prosecutor won't reveal what he found wrong with the case.

A Camden police officer stopped the gray Camaro that Paschall was driving
July 13, 1994. Inside the car, the officer found two bags of crystal
methamphetamine, a bag of marijuana, a loaded .45 caliber pistol and a set
of triple-beam scales.

But Paschall was able to barter away a potential life prison sentence and
secure five years probation.

The price: $45,000.

Paschall's girlfriend gathered up the money by buying money orders at Pine
Bluff banks in increments of less than $10,000 so as to avoid federal cash
reporting requirements.

Butler says he agreed to the deal because Paschall was facing additional
drug charges in two other counties.

"We knew what was going to ultimately happen to him,'' Butler says.

Paschall is now serving a four-year sentence in a federal prison for
shipping drugs from California to Arkansas. His downfall came in October
1995 when he called the White Hall police to turn himself in and report that
another drug dealer to whom he owed money had stuck a gun in his
girlfriend's side.

Tommy Winters, 47, of Calhoun County admits he did wrong. He admits he
raised marijuana crops and sold them. His drug dealing earned him a stint in
the state prison.

But Winters says the people who busted him should be held accountable too.
When drug task force agents raided his house in October 1992, they
confiscated everything in sight, he says.

Then, they took away any incentive Winters had to fight his drug charges.

Either he could plead guilty, forfeit a travel trailer and agree to pay
$25,000 to save his house from seizure, or his wife, Betty Winters, could
face criminal charges too. And if she was prosecuted, their 3-year-old
child, Cody, would have no parents and nowhere to live.

A letter from Gregg Parrish, a deputy prosecuting attorney, spells out the
agreement.

"At the time your client entered his plea to the controlled substance
charges, it was our previous agreement he would additionally forfeit the
travel trailer and purchase the equity in his residence for the sum of
$25,000. Since he had disposed of the travel trailer, we amended our
agreement to reflect he would pay the sum of $27,000." the letter states.

"Until that sum [$27,000] is paid, the state of Arkansas will actively
pursue forfeiture of the residence and the charges against Betty Winters,''
the letter continues.

"That's extortion; that's all the hell it is," says Winters, still fuming.

His wife, whom Winters says he never told about his marijuana deals,
remembers the event well.

"You don't have the means of fighting them," she says. "How do you fight
them? I couldn't see a way."