AGGRESSIVE ATTORNEY AT OPR TARGETS PROSECUTOR, LOSES ON ALL COUNTS

Agents of the Office of Professional Responsibility came down hard on
William R. Hogan.

But Hogan, a prosecutor in the Chicago U.S. Attorney’s office, was
vindicated last August by a judge who determined that the exhaustive OPR
investigation showed he was guilty of no wrongdoing.

"I have a very, very unfavorable view of OPR," said Hogan last week. "I
would say they were rank amateurs.

"The agents involved and the lawyer involved had never tried any major
cases. They had no concept of how to try the case. They had no experience
in dealing with the witnesses and no appreciation of the realities and
practicalities [of what goes on in this job]."

In the early 1990s, Hogan was the prosecutor who successfully won guilty
pleas and convictions against 56 members of Chicago’s notorious El Rukn
gang -- one of America’s most violent street gangs. Police say the gang
might be responsible for as many as 600 murders.

But in 1994, appeals courts began to reverse some of the convictions. Some
gang members said they’d been granted special favors in exchange for their
testimony, and defendants they testified against weren’t informed of that
special treatment, as required by federal discovery law.

Hogan was accused of allowing cooperative El Rukn witnesses to use drugs
while in jail, to have sex with their girlfriends, to receive free
cigarettes, food and beer, and to receive clothes and unlimited telephone
privileges.

The Justice Department said in a statement Friday that it pursued an
investigation of Hogan after it concluded that he engaged in "professional
misconduct, poor performance and mismanagement" in the El Rukn prosecutions.

OPR, in one of its largest investigations ever, spent two years looking
into the charges against Hogan. Based on OPR findings, he was fired in 1996.

At every step along the way, Hogan insisted he’d done nothing wrong. He
said most of the people OPR interviewed told the investigators Hogan had
done nothing wrong. He filed mountains of paperwork proving his
contentions, he said.

Yet OPR filed charges against him anyway.

While some of the charges made by El Rukn gang members about the favoritism
they received were true, the incidents occurred without Hogan’s prior
knowledge while the gang members were in custody of entities like the U.S.
Bureau of Prisons and the U.S. Marshals Service, Hogan said.

Last August, a judge ruled that OPR had gotten its facts wrong.

"They had the burden of proof and they couldn’t prove anything," Hogan said.

A 196-page opinion issued by Howard J. Ansorge, an administrative judge,
said: "A thorough analysis of the record in this appeal reveals that the
agency did not carry its burden of proving any of the charges listed in the
notice of proposed removal. Because the agency did not prove any of the
charges, I reverse the agency’s action removing the appellant from
employment."

Hogan went back to work and the government was ordered to reimburse him for
back pay and legal expenses. He is again trying cases. He is negotiating
with the Justice Department to recover the hundreds of thousands of dollar
he spent fighting for his professional life. He is also negotiating the
amount of back pay he is due.

But he feels his reputation has been irreparably damaged.

Once those negotiations are complete, Hogan will decide whether to continue
his employment with the Justice Department.

"They looked at every single aspect of my personal life, every woman I ever
dated, interviewed friends, family members, friends of family members. They
interviewed the guy my youngest sister used to date who had a subsequent
drug problem. . . . They dredged [the man’s past] up in front of his wife
and daughter -- absurd things. Their theory was I must have had some
involvement [in drugs]."

The bottom line, Hogan said, was that the OPR investigation was simply
incompetent.

"They got a ton of things wrong, even the most basic elements of the
information. The two agents and lawyer who conducted it were completely
incompetent and completely venal in the manner in which they created the
report."

While the OPR investigators traced his life back to his childhood, Hogan
said, none of the investigators who worked on a daily basis in the El Rukn
case ever had even one conversation with the lawyer who filed the charges
against him.

Checked-by: Richard Lake