Guilty Before Proven Innocent

How police harassment, jailhouse snitches, and a runaway war on drugs imprisoned an innocent family

Radley Balko from the May 2008 issue

(Page 5 of 7)

“We just don’t know,” says Alexandra Natapoff, a professor at the Loyola School of Law in Los Angeles and a leading expert on the use of informants. “The problem is that we don’t require the government to keep track of how informants are used. Where there have been thorough reviews by journalists—in Chicago, for example—we’ve seen common and persistent abuses. It’s bad enough at the federal level. But we really have no idea at all what goes on at the state and local level.”

Judge Melancon says informant abuse at the federal level was made even worse by amendments to the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. Broadly speaking, a convicted felon has one year from the date of his sentencing to remember everything he can—to tell the government everything he knows about other criminal activity in exchange for a reduction in his sentence. But amendments passed in 1991, 2002, and 2004 added several exceptions to that rule.

The most problematic of these allows a prisoner to get time off in exchange for information he relays to prosecutors well after the one-year cutoff, if prosecutors believe the prisoner wasn’t aware that the information would have been valuable to them before. Critics say the exception is too vague and too easily manipulated. Prison inmates can now spend the entirety of their sentences monitoring the news and rumor mills for drug prosecutions involving people or places with which they’re even vaguely familiar, then write to prosecutors to offer up information with just enough knowledge of a given town or suspect to appear believable.

“It’s wide open now,” Melancon says. “Everybody in the federal prisons knows what’s going on outside. You’ve got these people with extremely long drug sentences who hear about a drug case in a town they’re familiar with. Now they realize they can tell the government things that happened years ago—true or not—and get time off their sentences.”

Judge James Gray, a drug war critic who sits on the Superior Court of Orange County, California, and also has served as an assistant U.S. attorney, says courts need to give more scrutiny to snitch testimony, and prosecutors need to verify it. “This is a game,” Gray says. “You have lots of people sitting in prison who will do virtually anything to get out. They’ll sell you out in a minute to get out of there. They have nothing to lose and everything to gain. And every guy that guy gives up is going to get his own mandatory minimum sentence. And he then becomes another source of potentially bad information for prosecutors. You can quickly rack up a lot of convictions. But it shouldn’t be surprising if, in the process, you create some cottage industries.”

The Trial
Because there was no appeal, there are no transcripts of the Colomb trial. The account here has been culled from post-trial briefs and rulings as well as interviews with the Colombs, their attorneys, Judge Melancon, and others who sat through the proceedings.

The Colomb trial began on March 20, 2006, with a jury of 11 whites and one Latino woman. There was one black alternate juror. Once Grayson had laid out the four incidents from the 1990s and the details of the 2001 raid, he brought his prison informants into court, one after another, each claiming to have sold enormous quantities of crack and powder cocaine to the Colombs. Most said the transactions took place in public, yet Grayson had no surveillance video, audio recordings, or witnesses to these transactions other than the informants themselves.

Judging from the informant testimony, Edward and Danny Colomb would have been buying some $500,000 worth of wholesale crack cocaine a month in 1994, while both were still in high school. The government alleged that Danny and Edward alone bought more than $15 million in cocaine between 1993 and 1999. Grayson offered no witnesses who bought any of that cocaine, nor did he produce any drugs or money, other than the 72 grams seized in the October 2001 raid.

The Colombs’ lawyers called witnesses who testified to various hard-labor jobs the Colomb boys held during the entire period under question. From 1995 to 1999—the height of the alleged conspiracy—Danny and Edward both took full-time jobs right out of high school doing backbreaking work for a cement contractor in Kaplan, Louisiana. From 1999 through 2000, Danny woke at 3 a.m. and worked until noon five days a week collecting garbage. From 1998 to 2000, while working both these jobs, Danny was also taking night classes at Remington College, where he earned an associate degree in electronics. From 2000 to 2005, he worked full time repairing office machines.

Grayson argued at the trial that he didn’t need to show how or where the Colombs got the money to buy all of that cocaine, or what they did with the money after they’d sold it. During his questioning of witnesses and in his oral arguments, he countered defense evidence of the Colombs’ modest lifestyle by pointing out that drug dealers are frequently robbed of their cash and tend to be deft at hiding and laundering money.

The trial lasted just under two weeks. The jury deliberated for five hours, then came back with its verdict: Edward, Danny, Sammie, and Ann were all guilty of running a drug conspiracy. (Sammie was acquitted on two related charges.) The four were taken into custody, then to a holding prison to await sentencing.

Ann Colomb didn’t do well in prison. “I have diabetes,” she says. “And I couldn’t treat it right in prison. So when I had an attack, they took me to the hospital. Because I was a prisoner, they put me in this cage with these bars and wire. I couldn’t wait with regular people. They kept me waiting in there, like a dog, while I was getting sicker. I couldn’t do anything but sit there in that little cage and look at the walls and wait for the doctor. It took hours. I thought, ‘This is it. I’m going to die in here.’ ”

The prison stint also took a toll on Danny, who was incarcerated just after learning Elizabeth was pregnant. He slipped further into depression. On the hearth in their home, Elizabeth keeps the stack of pictures she and her parents sent Danny while he was in prison. Mixed between family photos, pictures of pets, and wishes from church members were photos Elizabeth took of her bare belly as it swelled with their baby. “The photos got me by,” Danny says. “But I was missing Elizabeth’s pregnancy. And thinking about my child growing up without me was hard to take.”

The Carriers say Elizabeth wasn’t handling it well either. “She lost interest in her pregnancy,” Elizabeth’s mother, Lois, says. “We were worried she was going to lose the baby.”

Grayson’s insistence that the Colomb family be imprisoned while they awaited sentencing surprised both Melancon and the Colomb family’s attorneys. “It seemed mean,” Shapiro, Edward Colomb’s lawyer, says. “He didn’t have to do that.” It also may have come back to bite him. The Colombs’ four months in federal prison introduced them to one brave inmate who came forward with information that would devastate Grayson’s case and set the family free.

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Guy Montag|4.14.08 @ 12:08PM|#

If he does not stop causing trouble at the TJ memorial he will really find out what police harassment is!

|4.14.08 @ 12:34PM|#

Please allow me, once again, to thank you Radley for your diligent efforts in exposing prosecutorial incompetence and criminal(?) misconduct.

I'm going to go throw up in disgust now.

|4.14.08 @ 12:46PM|#

I'm from Louisiana, and I can tell you that the "War On Drugs" has corrupted law enforcement there; in the town my parents live in, (about 40 mi. from New Orleans) the sheriff threatened to plant weed on the newly-elected mayor, before said-sheriff was caught running guns he probably got from drug-busts.
Stories like Jena 6 are milked for drama by the Mainstream media, but it's stories like this that are much more common; thanks for covering it!

Elemenope|4.14.08 @ 12:48PM|#

What I really wanna know is if one of the loyal H&R readers is moved to take up arms and plug a few crummy D.A.s (as daily does seem more and more likely) whether Radley would be brought up on incitement charges.

|4.14.08 @ 12:59PM|#

LMNOP,

No. Reporting facts does not constitute incitement to violence.

Yet.

Guy Montag|4.14.08 @ 1:08PM|#

No. Reporting facts does not constitute incitement to violence.

And it won't get you a job at ABC News, The New Republic, The New York Times (unless you are Bill Kristol) or a lot of other places too.

dm|4.14.08 @ 1:49PM|#

another Reason i'm proud to be an american

oh wait

|4.14.08 @ 1:59PM|#

Was it Jefferson who said, "I believe that Liberty from time to time must be refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants"? Or something like that.

Would Bill Kristol be considered at tyrant?

Guy Montag|4.14.08 @ 2:09PM|#

Would Bill Kristol be considered at tyrant?

No. Well, maybe to the meekest of shadow fearing webheads, or some of the writers and editors of his magazine.

Notamina|4.14.08 @ 4:13PM|#

I find it difficult to believe that Assistant U.S. Attorney Brett Grayson would knowingly seek out a conviction on these people. He, and his superior, based on his statement, still think the Columbs are guilty of drug trafficking. They are clearly delusional and therefore, I suggest, that they both be removed from office due to severe mental incapacity.

|4.14.08 @ 6:21PM|#

They are clearly delusional and therefore, I suggest, that they both be removed from office due to severe mental incapacity.

And people scoff at Berlusconi's call for regular mental evaluations of prosecutors.

LarryA|4.14.08 @ 10:32PM|#

"If you haven't done anything wrong, what do you have to worry about?"

|4.14.08 @ 11:36PM|#

Shit! Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit! The fact that the 'legal' system finally worked -- the Colombs have their lives back, with prejudice (literally and legally!) -- hardly imbues one with hope for a fine-tuned 'justice' system. Someone's head needs to role on this one -- and DA Washington and/or assistant DA Grayson seem front-and-center.

|4.15.08 @ 4:32PM|#

I'm pretty sure if Radley Balko ever decided to turn his attention to the "War on Sexual Predators," he'd find an equal number of egregious prosecutorial misconduct cases.

However, I have to wonder if those cases would meet with as much sympathy, since drugs are cool.

Radley Balko|4.15.08 @ 9:43PM|#

Michael,

You haven't been reading this site long, have you?

RED GREEN|4.16.08 @ 9:45AM|#

"Snitches"... has been a very popular strategy with the Feds...thats an old NAZI/Stalinist tactic,isn't it?

Angry African|4.16.08 @ 9:53AM|#

Man, man, man. I have been in the US for 18 months. Before that the UK for 4 years, but I am a South African working on sustainability and African investment. I have been crying about the lack of good media out here in the US. I found it. Thanks for this piece. It reminds us what the media can be if they really want to be...

|4.16.08 @ 8:58PM|#

I was extremely disappointed in Mr Balko's article. What a disappointment! As a member of this family, this article presented false statements and inaccuracies. I think Mr Balko needs to check out Webster's and look up the definitions of "racist" as well as "prejudice", there are vast differences between the two. This only proves to me that crooked journalists are no better than crooked cops and prosecutors. Report the TRUTH, don't FABRICATE it!

Dave2|4.18.08 @ 1:17AM|#

bookworm333,

As a member of what family? The Colombs? The Bookworm family?

What are you talking about?

|4.18.08 @ 5:32PM|#

Time to bring in the feds and clean up law enforcement in this area. Also time for a lawsuit to drain the town dry of funds for allowing these racists to do this to these people. Make every person who turned a blind eye pay their taxes to reimburse the Colombs for what was done by their town to them.

Pingback| 10.20.09 @ 4:21PM

Legalize it - Page 4 - Fires of Heaven Guild Message Board links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:

…Atlanta police shooting death - Crime & courts- msnbc.com Hrm that looks like a lot of innocent deaths... Botched Paramilitary Police Raids Ah family set up by overpaid informants Guilty Before Proven Innocent - Reason Magazine Just over 500 here The Wall - Alphabetical Index of Prisoners But wait, everyone in jail lies right? Oh here's a good one. Guy refused liver transplant and died because the hospital…

Pingback| 11.4.09 @ 2:05PM

Friends of Justice links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:

…cases in Tulia or that the nooses hanging from a tree in Jena held no racial significance. But Jena changed the way school administrators think across America, Tulia led to widespread reforms and the Colomb case (though it gained less publicity than Jena and Tulia) exposed fundamental flaws in federal conspiracy law. Orlando Patterson hopes Barack Obama can “quietly” reform the criminal justice…

Pingback| 11.9.09 @ 7:19PM

Obama’s Dance with the Devil « Friends of Justice links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:

…Balko. The senior editor of Reason shared my wonderment at the Justice Department’s strange arguments before the Supreme Court. Pottawatomie vs. McGhee has Balko revisiting the case of Ann Colomb and her three sons. Five years have passed now since my jeremiads against snithc testimony were being featured in the online version of the Lafayette Daily Advertiser while the Colomb trial was unfolding. Eac…

Pingback| 1.25.10 @ 3:13PM

Donald Washington’s Jena « Friends of Justice links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:

…sorry ma’am,” Washington said, “but you look awfully familiar. Have we met?” “No, Mr. Washington,” Ann replied, “we haven’t met. I was the woman you put in jail for dealing drugs.” The US Attorney’s face fell. “Oh, Mrs. Colomb,” he said, “I am so sorry about what happened to you and your family. And I want you to know that the…

Pingback| 4.15.10 @ 10:11PM

Fleeing from the truth « Friends of Justice links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:

…of-a-Texas-Ranger was a psychopathic liar. Knowing too much about Coleman would have made it impossible to prosecute 47 defendants and Mr. McEachern wasn’t going to walk away from that much glory. In Lafayette, Louisiana, Assistant US Attorney Brett Grayson believed Dexter Harmon and the thirty jail-birds Harmon recruited to corroborate his testimony. At one point, Grayson argued that his witness’s credibility…

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