U.S. PROSECUTORS SAY BRIGHT COLUMBIA GRADUATE HAD LED SECRET LIFE FOR YEARS

If Zolton Williams had been typical of last spring's graduates at Columbia
University Law School, he would now be applying for admission to the bar.
But Williams is not typical.

He is behind bars, his once promising legal career in ashes. He waits in a
Federal jail in Brooklyn to be sentenced to up to 12 years in prison for
smuggling tens of thousands of dollars' worth of cocaine from Jamaica to the
United States while he was a student at one of the nation's leading law
schools.

Federal prosecutors say that Williams, a 29-year-old Brooklyn man who
emigrated from Jamaica as a child, began contriving his smuggling schemes
almost as soon as he entered Columbia three years ago.

His arrest in July, two months after his graduation, and conviction two
weeks ago have dismayed and bewildered those who knew him at Columbia,
including classmates and professors who recalled him as a bright, energetic
and intellectually curious student who participated vigorously in class
discussions and did well with legal intricacies.

"People were shocked, stunned, distressed," said Prof. Richard Briffault,
who gave Williams an A-minus in a course on state and local government law.
"He asked good questions and wrote a very good final exam," Briffault
recalled recently. "It's a terrible thing, like hearing a relative died."

Debra Cohn, an adjunct member of the law faculty who gave Williams a B-plus
in her seminar on health-care fraud control, recalled that his forceful
participation and "sometimes strong opinions" made him a "valuable
contributor to class discussion."

Williams, who is to be sentenced Feb. 12 by Judge Raymond J. Dearie in
Federal District Court in Brooklyn, declined to be interviewed or to comment
about the case, said his wife, Kele Williams, who is a lawyer.

She, too, declined to talk about the case or about her husband, and there
was a similar refusal from Williams's mother, a housekeeper who lives in
Brooklyn and who also emigrated from Jamaica. Williams's father, a
firefighter, remained in Jamaica and lives in Kingston.

Williams's trial lawyer and several friends and classmates who were reached
would not talk about him, except for one friend and classmate who, speaking
on the condition of anonymity, said only: "I think he was a great student.
Obviously, I think most people were shocked by what occurred. You'll get
that general sentiment from anyone who knew him."

But the case has exposed the double life of the budding lawyer, a life that
court records indicate went beyond smuggling drugs.

An admitted confederate of Williams in the drug case has also told
investigators that he and Williams had engaged in credit card fraud during
Williams's law school years. And the authorities say that Williams, also
while in law school, filed false criminal charges that led to the arrest of
a man with whom he was involved in a dispute. No charges have been filed
against Williams regarding these accusations.

These followed earlier run-ins with the law, according to state and local
court records that cited a half-dozen arrests when Williams was a teen-ager
and in his early 20's. Most involved cases in which charges like possession
of stolen property or a weapon were dismissed or, in one instance, ended in
a conviction for a noncriminal violation. But in one case, in 1988, Williams
participated with a gun-wielding companion in a street robbery.

Williams, who at the time of the robbery was 18 and at the end of his
freshman year at Brooklyn College -- he graduated magna cum laude from the
State University at Stony Brook in 1994 -- was given five years' probation
and youthful offender status, a break that meant the records in the matter
were sealed, and he was officially deemed to have no criminal record as a
result of the case. The records of that case and those dismissed were
ordered unsealed after his arrest in the Federal drug case.

The law enforcement authorities say that in moonlighting as a cocaine
trafficker while in law school, Williams used his legal skills in an effort
to avoid detection, by showing another conspirator how to do research in a
computerized legal data base to determine the "profiles" customs agents use
to stop and search airline passengers suspected of carrying drugs. And
prosecutors also say he nearly succeeded in escaping conviction by inducing
a friend to commit perjury to provide him with an alibi.

The first of Williams's two trials in the drug case ended in October with a
hung jury; the panel deadlocked 11 to 1 for acquittal. But the alibi
testimony was exposed as a fabrication by one of the prosecutors in the
retrial, Andrew Weissmann, after which the second jury convicted Williams
after deliberating barely an hour.

Weissmann, who himself graduated from Columbia Law School in 1984, assessed
his fellow alumnus shortly after the retrial.

"He's smart, but he's a criminal," said Weissmann, deputy chief of the
criminal division in the United States Attorney's office in Brooklyn. "As a
lawyer and a graduate of the law school, I was offended. It was an improper
use of his education to commit crimes."

A similar assessment came from Federal Magistrate Judge Cheryl L. Pollak
during an early hearing in the case. "For somebody who is as obviously
intelligent and bright as you are, to get into Columbia Law School, your
past record is really abominable," she said.

The drug smuggling enterprise was exposed when Williams's associate in the
plot, who carried the two pounds of cocaine into the United States in 1997
in about 100 swallowed condoms, became ill after some of the cocaine leaked
into his stomach and the condoms had to be surgically removed at a hospital.

The associate, Anthony Fleurancois, pleaded guilty to drug charges in a deal
that involved cooperating with the prosecution, and he also told of other
unsuccessful attempts by him and Williams to smuggle cocaine from Jamaica
that began about two months after Williams started at Columbia Law in 1995.

Williams's trial lawyer, Martin Klotz, has asked Judge Dearie for permission
to leave the case because of the defense witness's perjured testimony.
Another prosecutor, Nikki Kowalski, told the judge, "We believe that Klotz
was unaware that the testimony was concocted by his client."

The silence of Williams and his relatives and friends leaves many questions
about his dual life unanswered. The court file only hints at possibilities.
A Federal agent quoted Fleurancois as saying that during their college
years, Williams "drove fancy cars, such as a Mercedes-Benz." But a defense
witness testified that Williams's life style did not seem extravagant.

Ms. Kowalski, in arguing to the jury for the prosecution, said it was not a
matter of extravagance, but rather that Williams had been "living a
comfortable middle-class life style" beyond the means of someone claiming to
have no more than a "a couple of thousand dollars" a year in income and no
savings or other assets. She suggested that Williams, who did not marry
until after his arrest in July, had sustained a middle-class existence
through drug dealing.

As an example, she said that in 1996 Williams paid $27,000, without
borrowing, to buy a cooperative apartment in Flatbush, Brooklyn. His mother
testified that she had provided most of the money from an insurance
settlement, but Ms. Kowalski said that no documents had been offered to
support that claim.

After graduating from James Madison High School in Brooklyn in 1987,
Williams attended three colleges over the next seven years, putting in his
last two years at the State University at Stony Brook, from which he
graduated in 1994. He was nominated for Phi Beta Kappa, but appears not to
have joined the honor society, said a school official who declined to be
identified.

Scholarship grants and loans financed most of Williams's law school
education, and he owes about $60,000 on those loans, the court file shows.

He is not likely to repay them soon.

Checked-by: Don Beck