COURT RULING FORCES RETHINKING OF TESTIMONY DEALS

WASHINGTON (AP) -- For years, federal prosecutors used a simple strategy to
crack criminal rings: Find the guy who will talk, offer a deal and get him
to testify against the others.

But now the practice, which some defense lawyers equate with bribery, is in
limbo while a federal court decides whether such deals will remain legal.

``When prosecutors dangle a 'Get Out of Jail Early' card, it is the
equivalent of handing someone cold cash,'' said Debra Soltis, a Washington
defense lawyer who represents accused drug dealers and the like in federal
court. ``I think it's just using common sense to say that it's a bribe and
that it is outrageous.''

The initial ruling, issued by a three-judge panel from the Denver-based
10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, ``was a bucket of ice water for
prosecutors,'' said John Shepard Wiley Jr., a University of California, Los
Angeles law professor who routinely fashioned such bargains as a federal
prosecutor in Los Angeles.

The decision was written by two Republican appointees -- U.S. District
Judges Paul J. Kelly Jr., appointed by President Bush, and David M. Ebel,
appointed by President Reagan, and the chief judge of the 10th Circuit,
Stephanie Seymour, appointed by Democrat Jimmy Carter.

But soon after it was issued, the full appeals court decided to review the
decision sometime this fall, meaning the panel's ruling is not yet in
force. The Justice Department is expected to appeal the ruling later this
week.

While many legal experts predict the panel's ruling will be reversed, the
debate it provoked rages on.

``If it stands, and I can't believe that it will, the whole judicial system
would come to a screeching halt,'' said one prosecutor who asked not to be
identified.

Prosecutors strike hundreds -- if not thousands -- of such deals every
year. Typically, a bit player agrees to testify against his or her fellow
criminals in return for lenient treatment in court.

The three-judge panel's stern opinion took issue with both the moral and
legal underpinning of plea deals, and essentially made criminals of the
prosecutors who offer them.

Broadly read, a federal bribery law makes it a crime for anyone to offer
``anything of value'' in return for testimony. Prosecutors say the law was
not intended to cover them.

The three judges cited the Bible and the Magna Carta to rebut prosecutors'
arguments. ``One of the very oldest principles of our legal heritage is
that the king is subject to the law,'' they wrote.

The July 1 decision, if it had been allowed to take effect, would have been
binding law in Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah and Wyoming.

For now, prosecutors are going forward as if the ruling did not exist, but
defense lawyers in several states have cited it to argue that their clients
were fingered illegally.

``If it's a federal crime to offer something for testimony in Colorado,
then it's going to be a federal crime in Maryland or Virginia or
California,'' said Larry Pozner, president-elect of the National
Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

The lawyer for Timothy McVeigh, convicted in the Oklahoma City bombing,
argued that the ruling could help his client win a new trial, since a
friend testified against McVeigh in return for leniency. He made the
argument as he sought a delay in the appeal of McVeigh's conviction; that
delay request was rejected.

The appeals court's decision concerned a case involving a drug ring
operating between Kansas and California. One member of the ring agreed to
testify in return for the promise he would not be prosecuted for some
crimes and the hope a judge would look kindly on his cooperation when
sentencing him.

The three-judge panel's rationale, if adopted nationwide, could affect any
eventual prosecution in the Monica Lewinsky investigation.

President Clinton or others could argue the former White House intern got
an illegal quid pro quo, since Ms. Lewinsky won immunity from prosecution
for herself and her mother before she agreed to go before a grand jury.

Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)