WRATH OF VENGEANCE

Prosecutors Take Aim At Defense Attorneys

San Francisco lawyer Patrick Hallinan negotiated a sweet deal for Ciro
Mancuso in 1990.

Mancuso was facing a life sentence on 49 felonies related to his
massive Reno, Nev., drug trafficking operation.

For Mancuso's "full and complete cooperation and truthful testimony"
in helping to convict others in the drug operation, the government
agreed to seek only 10 years in prison. Further, he would be allowed
to keep $600,000 he had in a Swiss bank account and various properties
worth more than $4 million. The best news: prosecutors promised not to
indict any other members of Mancuso's family.

Hallinan had played hardball in rancorous negotiating sessions with
Assistant U.S. Attorney Anthony White and was elated with the results.

That soon changed. Within months, Hallinan would learn his client had
secretly sought out prosecutors and struck another deal.

Mancuso had agreed to link Hallinan to the drug conspiracy. In
exchange, court records show, prosecutors promised to give one of
Nevada's most notorious drug traffickers probation -- and no jail time.

In the Crosshairs

When Congress enacted a series of get-tough-on-crime laws in the
1980s, no one realized defense attorneys would become such easy targets.

The same laws that have made it easier for prosecutors to prove money
laundering and racketeering and other conspiracy charges made it
especially easy to argue that defense attorneys had illegally
conspired with their clients.

"When defense lawyers are aggressive, or innovative in terms of the
kinds of issues that are raised, prosecutors have this tendency to
assume the criminal defense lawyer is a member of a conspiracy," said
William Aronwald, a former federal and New York state prosecutor who
once supervised the Federal Organized Crime Strike Force in the
Southern District of New York.

Aronwald is now a criminal defense lawyer in White Plains,
N.Y.

"One of the problems is that prosecutors have this notion that it is
impossible for criminal defense lawyers to successfully represent
defendants in sophisticated organized crime or drug cases without
getting into bed with their clients," he said.

Such attacks were an unexpected and unwelcome outcome of
get-tough-on-crime legislation, he said, including mandatory
sentencing guidelines approved in 1987.

These guidelines require tough sentences for federal crimes and give
judges little leeway in reducing them. So one of the few ways a
defendant can win a reduced sentence is to snitch on someone else in
exchange for a recommendation from prosecutors for a reduced sentence.
And what easier target for a desperate informant than his lawyer?

The Justice Department's Thornburgh Rule, which allows federal
prosecutors to ignore ethics guidelines in the states in which they
operate, can exacerbate the problem, Aronwald said.

For example, state ethics guidelines forbid contacts between
prosecutors and a defendant unless the defendant's attorney is
present. The Thornburgh Rule allows prosecutors to talk to defendants
without the defense attorney's knowledge, as happened in the Mancuso
case.

A measure approved by Congress this year would require the Justice
Department to end its use of the Thornburgh Rule next year, but the
Justice Department is already asking Congress to repeal the new law.

"Thornburgh took a position which frankly shocks the conscience of
most judges and lawyers," Aronwald said. The guideline means if you
were a federal prosecutor, "you could ignore whatever ethical
prohibitions there are."

John Wesley Hall Jr., a criminal defense lawyer who lives in Little
Rock, Ark., and wrote a law book on legal ethics, said that too many
prosecutors see defense attorneys as easy targets. If charges are
brought against a defense attorney, there should be more than just an
informant's allegations, he said.

"Any prosecutor who indicts without more information than his
When federal agents caught up with him in 1990, he cut a deal with
prosecutors: He would deliver his clients in exchange for his freedom.

Minkin not only allowed the feds to wire his office but wore
electronic surveillance equipment himself as he met with various
clients to discuss legal work, violating the most important tenet of
bar association ethical standards -- the confidentiality of the
lawyer-client relationship.

Then federal prosecutors went one step farther. They began steering
defendants or potential defendants to Minkin and recorded their
conversations, too.

Eventually, all of Minkin's cohorts were arrested, and he prepared to
testify against them.

Defense lawyers argued that all evidence should be suppressed because
of Minkin's violation of the attorney-client privilege, and the
misconduct by prosecutors in steering new clients his way, then taping
them.

In 1993, a federal judge decided that simply suppressing evidence in
the matter was insufficient. He dismissed all the charges against
defendants that Minkin had helped snare.

Minkin quit practicing law and could not be found for
comment.

When Assistant U.S. Attorney Anthony White brought charges against
Ciro Mancuso in 1990, it was hailed as one of the largest drug
conspiracy cases ever brought in Reno, Nev.

The indictment alleged that Mancuso used a multi-state cocaine- and
marijuana-smuggling operation to buy ranches, mountaintop retreats,
beach-front estates and anything else he might want.

White, a decorated Vietnam veteran, was acclaimed once again as a hero
for taking down Mancuso, who was known not only as a drug smuggler,
but for the cagey ways he had avoided arrest and prison time for
nearly two decades.

Mancuso would come close to succeeding again. He had information that
might tempt prosecutors to cut him a break.

Mancuso could lay out the intricate smuggling network he used to bring
drugs from the far reaches of South America into this country via
Mexico. He knew the names and the roles of dozens of insiders in the
operation, many of them bigtime and longtime smugglers.

But providing such information involved risks. Snitching against these
people could get Mancuso killed. Instead, he laid out a deal
implicating his lawyer, which involved far fewer risks. White bit on
the proposal.

Patrick Hallinan was a prominent defense lawyer and an accomplished
archeologist from San Francisco. His father was considered to be one
of the finest lawyers to emerge from the city. His brother was head of
the city's law department.

Mancuso was one of the wealthiest of Hallinan's longtime
clients.

Hallinan filed a flood of paperwork after Mancuso's indictment, citing
what he considered to be illegal and unethical actions by White. The
animus between the two lawyers grew, and Hallinan had soon forced a
deal in which Mancuso would be granted leniency for informing on others.

Then Hallinan became the unlikely target after Mancuso re-negotiated
his deal to include, he has said in court papers, a probationary
sentence. He would walk free instead of doing the 10 years he'd been
promised earlier.

Within months, Hallinan, and 11 Mancuso confederates, were indicted
for drug smuggling, money laundering and racketeering. All of
Mancuso's colleagues ranked below him in his drug ring hierarchy.

White and other prosecutors in Reno had a history of trying to get
high-powered lawyers disqualified from criminal drug prosecutions. But
this was the first time a criminal defense lawyer had become the
subject of an investigation because a client had turned on him.

In letters, the Post-Gazette sent specific questions about the Mancuso
case to the U.S. Attorney in Las Vegas and to Justice Department
officials but got no response.

"My perspective is that, when you lie down with dogs, you get fleas,"
John Keker of San Francisco, who was Hallinan's lawyer, said in an
interview. "In Reno, that prosecutor had been running so wild for so
long that they just lost all track of what's important and what the
truth was.

"It was like the inquisition. It didn't matter what you'd done. You
could be the devil, but if you confessed in this case, you'd get the
sweetest deal. And if you could give them someone like Patrick
Hallinan, you could walk."

From the start, Hallinan and his lawyers accused Mancuso of lying to
weasel out of his prison time. And as Hallinan and Keker quickly found
out, White had just begun.

Less than a month before the trial, White moved to oust Keker from the
case because he had once represented Mancuso's wife in a minor
criminal matter.

"Anybody who would try to disqualify me at this late date is a chicken
who is afraid to try a case against me," Keker told the local media.

Keker responded in court with a scathing petition to dismiss the
Hallinan indictment because it was filled with misconduct by the
prosecutors.

As motion after motion was filed showing the weaknesses of the
government's case, federal prosecutors tried another tack against Hallinan.

In June 1994, federal agents raided his San Francisco home, hoping to
find evidence that Hallinan had smuggled Peruvian artifacts and was
illegally trafficking in ancient art.

Hallinan had been an art collector since his undergraduate days at the
University of California at Berkeley, when he studied for an
archaeology degree.

No charges were ever filed against Hallinan based on the search
warrant. He still has not recovered hundreds of documents and valuable
pieces of art taken during the raid.

And in early 1996, Hallinan was acquitted when he faced Mancuso in
court. His lawyers were able to prove that the government had coached
Mancuso's testimony and that he was lying about Hallinan's direct
knowledge of his drug activities and money laundering.

Mancuso was sentenced to a 10-year prison term.

In November 1996, Mancuso's lawyers filed an appeal of the sentence,
contending that White had promised him "little or no jail time" for
testifying against his lawyer. Mancuso's attorneys said the government
breached its plea agreement with Mancuso.

A 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel disagreed with Mancuso's
lawyers. He is now serving his sentence at the federal penitentiary in
Yankton, S.D.