RULING ON LENIENCY SHAKES A U.S. LEGAL PILLAR

WICHITA, Kansas---Every day in courts across the United States, witnesses
take the stand in exchange for favorable treatment from prosecutors. Some
people call them informers. Prosecutors call them essential.

So it was a jolt to law-enforcement officials across the country when a
three-judge federal appeals court ruled this summer that federal
prosecutors could no longer use the testimony of witnesses, possibly facing
criminal charges, who had been promised leniency. Promises of favorable
treatment, the court said, violated a federal law prohibiting bribery.

The decision, some lawyers say, may be the first successful challenge under
the federal bribery law to the practice of offering witnesses leniency, a
centerpiece of the American legal system since Colonial times. It has
triggered a national examination in the courts, in Congress and among legal
scholars.

Since the ruling, which is under review by the full federal appeals court
in Denver, courts in virtually every state have been asked to bar leniency
deals, bills have been introduced in Congress to negate the effect of the
panel's decision and legal scholars have been debating whether prosecutors
have grown too reliant on the use of informers.

"In the culture of this country nobody likes a snitch, yet that has become
the crux of the criminal justice system," said Steven Zeidman, a professor
of criminal law at New York University Law School. "But nobody likes to
think about it, and now we're being forced to think about it."

The federal bribery law says that "whoever" offers "anything of value to
any person" for testimony commits a crime. In its July 1 ruling the
threejudge panel said that "whoever" includes federal prosecutors.

"The judicial process is tainted and justice cheapened when factual
testimony is purchased, whether with leniency or money," the panel said in
a drug case that began in Wichita.

Within days, the ruling was annulled by the full 12-member 10th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals, in Denver, which decided it should review a
decision with such far-reaching consequences. The full court is to hear the
case next month.

In its original ruling, the threejudge panel ordered a new trial for the
defendant, Sonya Singleton, 25. At her trial in 1997 on charges of being
involved in a drug conspiracy and money-laundering, she was identified as
part of a drug distribution scheme by a Wichita cocaine dealer, who was
given a reduced sentence in exchange for his testimony.

Until the full appeals court decided to review the case, the ruling was
binding on all the federal courts in the six states of the 10th Circuit:
Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahorna, Utah and Wyoming.

But because U.S. circuit courts are second in importance only to the U.S.
Supreme Court, the ruling was seen as damaging to prosecutors nationally.
In legal papers, the Justice Department said the decision by the threejudge
panel to "make a criminal out of nearly every federal prosecutor" was an
"absurd result."

Justice Department officials in Wichita and Washington, who are working
together on the appeal, declined to be interviewed. But in their legal
filings they say the panel's ruling could cripple prosecutors. During the
short time it was in effect, the ruling "caused chaos in the district
courts and U.S. attorney's offices in this circuit and significant
disruption throughout the rest of the country," the Justice Department
filing says.

Ms. Singleton's lawyer, John Wachtel, said prosecutors everywhere had
perverted the justice system by offering leniency to criminals.

In a telephone interview from a federal prison in Texas, Ms. Singleton said
it was unfair that prosecutors had a tool as potent as freedom to offer
witnesses.

"Who wouldn't testify against somebody," she said, "even if it's a lie,
iust so they can go home?" Ms. Singleton is serving a four-year term. She
says she is innocent, and she is appealing her conviction.

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers has filed a
friend-of-the-court brief urging the court to support her appeal.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski