PLEA-BARGAIN BAN REVERSED BY FULL COURT

A U.S. Court Of Appeals Three-Judge Panel Called Immunity Deals Illegal
Last Summer.

DENVER -- An appeals court ruled yesterday that prosecutors can offer
plea bargains in exchange for testimony, overturning a court decision
that declared the practice illegal.

The decision last summer by a three-member panel of the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the 10th Circuit had shocked the Justice Department. That
ruling took issue with the moral and legal underpinning of immunity
deals -- which critics describe as a form of bribery -- and
essentially would have made criminals of federal prosecutors who
offered them.

The ruling was put on hold until the full Denver-based appeals court
could decide. In its majority opinion yesteray, a 12-member panel
wrote that, if Congress had intended to overturn the accepted
practice, "it would have done so in clear, unmistakable and unarguable
language."

The reversal pleased Justice Department officials.

"It's a great day for federal prosecutors across this nation," Linda
McMahan, U.S. attorney for Colorado, said.

The three judges who made the earlier ruling also sat on the 12-member
panel, and dissented in yesterday's reversal.

The case centered on the Kansas conviction of Sonya Singleton on
charges of cocaine trafficking and money laundering. The three judges
said that the chief prosecution witness illegally received leniency in
exchange for his testimony, violating federal law against bribing witnesses.

"If justice is perverted when a criminal defendant seeks to buy
testimony from a witness, it is no less perverted when the government
does so," Judge Paul J. Kelley Jr. said.

The Justice Department called the practice common, noting that Timothy
McVeigh and Terry Nichols were convicted in the Oklahoma City bombing
based on testimony from a former friend who struck a deal.

The three judges had ordered a new trial for Singleton, and had said
that Congress should rewrite anti-bribery laws if legislators believed
that prosecutors should be exempt.

Lawyers scrambled to delay other cases affected by the ruling, but
most did not expect it to stand.

If the full 10th Circuit court did not overturn the ruling, Congress
would likely amend the law, they said.