A $475,000 BRIBE IS OK, IF PAID BY DA

Please consider the following fictitious scenario:

Joe Schmo is arrested and charged with bashing in the faces of several
elderly people as a way of stealing all their valuables.

Luckily, Schmo recently came into a goodly sum of money, so he hires a
crackerjack lawyer, Malignio Savage, who immediately makes an offer to
several potential witnesses.

''Now, we don't want anybody to tell any fibs, of course, but we'd
very much appreciate it if anyone who can provide Mr. Schmo with an
alibi would come forward,'' Savage says.

''We would appreciate it to the tune of $475,000 per alibi,'' he
continues, ''provided that your completely truthful [tee-hee]
testimony results in Mr. Schmo being acquitted.''

Schmo is later found not guilty by a jury and the defense's alibi
witnesses walk away with $475,000 each.

Does everything here seem on the up and up to you?

No? Why not? Many people seem to think it's a great way of doing
things. It's great, that is, if it's the prosecution paying the bribes.

I came up with that $475,000 figure, by the way, like
this:

A fine fellow (nonfictional) named Michael Kuzmann of Gilbert, Monroe
County, went to California to acquire 90 pounds of methamphetamine. He
returned and gave it to Stephen Konya of Bethlehem for distribution in
the Lehigh Valley. Kuzmann, Konya and others involved in the speed
selling scheme got caught.

Who is more culpable? The wheeler-dealer who gets the dope in
California, transports it to the Lehigh Valley and arranges for some
wretch to spread it around, or the wretch?

I vote for the wheeler-dealer. But Kuzmann got a five-year minimum
prison term and, in Lehigh County Court on Dec. 18, Konya got 24 years.

Why the 19-year difference? Kuz-mann ''cooperated'' with prosecutors
by testifying against Konya.

I figure that even wretches, if given a choice between, say, paying
$25,000 and doing a year in prison, would come up with the $25,000.
That amount times 19 years is $475,000. So prosecutors paid Kuzmann
something valued at $475,000 for his testimony, and it's all on the up
and up.

That case was mentioned in a story that ran Sunday. The story noted
that a federal appeals court, ruling in a Kansas drug case, said such
deals are not on the up and up. That court said that paying witnesses
with leniency violates a federal bribery law.

Prosecutors across the land went ape and the ruling was appealed to a
higher federal court, which restored the right of prosecutors to bribe
witnesses. The U.S. Supreme Court has yet to be heard from, but with
the Supremes' present motto of ''the authorities are always right,''
prosecutors probably are not too worried.

I have been sitting through court proceedings for many years and most
of the people who get prosecuted richly deserve it. But not all.

One case has haunted me since 1974. I covered the murder trial of Tony
Boyle, national president of the United Mine Workers, and to this day
I am convinced he was innocent. He had no reason to kill UMW rebel
Jock Yablonski, already defeated by Boyle.

Those with a reason included William Turnblazer, who got off with a
sweet plea bargain deal after agreeing to be the key witness against
Boyle. Turnblazer copped his plea and walked; Boyle died in prison.

More recently, Allentown Monsignor Stephen Forish was prosecuted on
vice charges based entirely on the word of a junkie ex-con who was in
violation of his parole at the time and who lied to police from the
start.

Had junkie Angel Figueroa made a sweet deal with Northampton County
District Attorney John Morganelli? Jury members suspected he had, as
Morganelli presented Figueroa's testimony with a straight face.

Forish was acquitted, but you wonder what might have happened if he
had not been a respected priest. How many lesser lights get convicted
because a DA is allowed to pay bribes for testimony in the form of
years of prison, dangled one way or the other?