Federal prosecutors and investigators are on the spot this week, battling charges by drug kingpin Steven A. Silvers that his conviction and 35-year sentence were won with lies.
Years after Silvers received what was, at the time, Maryland's stiffest narcotics sentence, he has brought his case back to U.S. District Court in Baltimore, to the same judge who convicted him.
But this time, one of the featured witnesses has been the trial prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Gregory Welsh.
Silvers' lawyer, Gerald C. Ruter, has argued at hearings this week that the lies of a prosecution witness, which were discovered after the 1988 trial, should get him a lighter sentence -- or overturn his conviction. Mr. Ruter says prosecutors should -- have known sooner that the witness was misleading them.
Federal prosecutors disagree. Several other witnesses and "an avalanche of documentary evidence" from Silvers' own records were enough to convict him of operating a criminal enterprise, they contend.
Silvers was part of a Florida-based drug ring that distributed hundreds of pounds of cocaine and marijuana in Western Maryland and other areas on the East Coast from 1978 to 1987.
In 1989, the ring's founder, Marshall L. Jones, was sentenced to 18 years in prison after pleading guilty and cooperating with investigators; other members, including many from Western ,X Maryland, also have been imprisoned.
At the heart of Silvers' challenge is former Miami police officer John Gerald Gerant. He was one of several people involved in the ring who testified against Silvers, cooperating with prosecutors in return for immunity.
Gerant portrayed himself as a drug-running pilot and testified about Silvers' involvement in organizing large shipments of cocaine from the Bahamas and South America. But he minimized his own role as an organizer and understated his earnings by millions.
He also surprised prosecutors when he told the jury that he had been a Drug Enforcement Administration and FBI informant, a lie discovered before the trial ended. But prosecutors say they did not know he was lying about other activities.
After Silvers was convicted, Gerant, a police officer from 1971 to 1980, was hired as an undercover informant for the DEA and FBI on international drug-buying trips. His deal with the government "was his chance to wipe the slate clean and start all over again," federal prosecutors wrote in court papers in 1992.
But that deal had turned sour by 1989. The DEA's continuing investigation into the Florida gang's drug operation revealed that Gerant had been "deeply involved" in organizing shipments of cocaine ranging from 100 to over 400 kilograms from the Caribbean and South America, rather than merely piloting the drugs.
The hearing before Judge Herbert M. Maletz is expected to continue into next week.