From: [C reuters] at [clari.net] (Reuter / David Morgan)
Newsgroups: clari.news.crime.top,clari.usa.law.misc,clari.news.alcohol+drugs,clari.news.front_page,clari.usa.law
Subject: Judge says Noriega trial may have had legal error
Organization: Copyright 1996 by Reuters
Date: Wed, 4 Dec 1996 15:42:35 PST
Expires: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 13:50:12 PST
                                         
         ATLANTA (Reuter) - The federal judge who sentenced Manuel  
Noriega to 40 years in prison in 1992 may have made a legal 
error in denying the deposed Panamanian strongman a new trial, a 
U.S. appellate judge said Wednesday. 
         At a 1 1/4 hour hearing before the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of  
Appeals, a three-judge panel heard defense arguments aimed at 
overturning Noriega's conviction on U.S. drug and racketeering 
charges. 
         Defense attorneys said the conviction should be thrown out  
because Noriega was barred from testifying about a $10 million 
sum he claims to have received in the 1980s for being a paid CIA 
informant. The omission enabled prosecutors to attribute 
Noriega's wealth to payoffs from drug smugglers, they argued. 
         But the main issue of Wednesday's hearing was a separate  
defense motion for a new trial in which Noriega accused 
prosecutors of suppressing evidence that a key witness had 
received a $1.25 million bribe from the Cali drug cartel. 
         ``The U.S. government wanted a conviction in this case so  
badly that they were willing to go to a criminal organization to 
obtain a witness,'' Noriega attorney Jon May told the panel. 
''We have an agreement here with a criminal organization that 
was hidden from the jury and the result was a $1.25 million 
bribe,'' he said. 
         May and defense co-counsel Frank Rubino say the Cali cartel  
came up with the bribe after the U.S. government agreed to 
shortened the prison sentence of a man linked to the cartel from 
23 years to eight years. The defense did not learn of the 
alleged payoff until after Noriega's conviction, he said. 
         Last March, the attorneys asked U.S. District Judge William  
Hoeveler in Miami to grant their client a new trial on the 
grounds that the disclosure of bribery constituted new evidence. 
But Hoeveler, who sentenced Noriega after a seven-month trial, 
denied the motion, saying the defense failed to show another 
trial would produce a different result. 
         ``My preliminary thoughts are that the district court  
(judge) may have made a mistake when he said third-party 
agreements were somehow outside the scope,'' U.S. Circuit Judge 
J.L. Edmondson said Wednesday. 
         He also quoted Hoeveler as saying the witness, convicted  
Medellin drug trafficker Ricardo Bilonick, was important to the 
prosecution's case because his testimony was not strongly 
challenged by the defense in cross-examination -- in a trial 
that often turned on questions of witness credibility. 
         ``Had the defense had this information, he might have been  
more subject to cross-examination,'' Edmondson speculated. 
         Bilonick, a U.S.-educated lawyer, owned an airline called  
Inair that flew tons of cocaine between Panama and the United 
States in the 1980s. After surrendering to U.S. narcotics agents 
in Panama in 1991, he testified that Inair's DC-8 cargo jets 
made 19 flights of cocaine from Panama to Miami between 1982 and 
1984. For allowing each flight to use Panama's main airport, he 
said, Noriega received $500,000. 
         Bilonick was set free after serving a three-year sentence  
and has since returned to Panama. Two men have since testified 
that Bilonick agreed to appear in court after being bribed by 
the Cali cartel. 
         Assistant U.S. Attorney Dawn Bowen, asked repeatedly by the  
panel why prosecutors did not disclose the allegations during 
trial proceedings, said there was no hard evidence that a 
bribery had ever occurred. 
--       
                   C O P Y R I G H T * R E M I N D E R  

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