IN A FEDERAL DRUG CASE, TAKING A PLEA MIGHT NOT BE A BARGAIN

The way federal investigators squeeze people for information after
indictment sometimes leads to a gray shade of justice, said Gary Potter, a
criminal-justice professor at Eastern Kentucky University.

Here's how it works, Potter said: Federal prosecutors load up the charges
on a defendant, then press him to give up a list of names -- usually four
to six are required.

In return, prosecutors shave off some charges, and the defendant pleads guilty.

"We have people doing time ... who were only tangentially connected to drug
networks who were 'dimed' by people who were running local networks,"
Potter said.

In those cases, the bigger dealers "ended up getting much shorter sentences
simply because they were the people who could give up the names," Potter
said. "It's a horrifying practice. It's a terrible practice."

Stack up all those small-time dealers, Potter said, and you've not made
much of a dent in the drug business.

Joseph M. Hood, a U.S. District Court judge for Eastern Kentucky, said it's
only natural that bigger dealers might have more leverage in plea negotiations.

"I would think that the lower-level street person can only give his
information as to his supplier; the higher up you go, the more people that
you know are involved," said Hood, who didn't handle any of the McCreary cases.

Hood said it would shock him, though, if prosecutors were stacking up
unsubstantiated charges for purposes of pressuring defendants.

Federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Kentucky are big on getting
guilty pleas: 98.8 percent of convictions in the district are from pleas,
the third-highest rate in the nation during the 2001 fiscal year, according
to a report by the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

But, as David Perkins found out, after a guilty plea is signed, the court
is not always fond of giving breaks on sentences.

Between 1991 and 2001, Eastern Kentucky was among the six lowest districts
in the nation in granting such "downward departures," according to the
commission. In 2001, the district had the lowest rate of those six,
granting departure in only 1.4 percent of all cases.