Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 7, 1993 TAG: 9302070184
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DOUGLAS PARDUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
LAWYER'S CLIENTS FUEL PROSECUTION
Lawyer KEITH NEELY'S lawyer says the witnesses against him are bigger crooks than the government accuses him of being.When Christiansburg lawyer Keith Neely goes on trial next month on charges of using his law practice to promote drug smuggling, one of the key witnesses against him may be a dead man.
That witness is Donald Kimbler, a 52-year-old defrocked federal firearms agent who went over to the dark side into the life of a drugged-out private eye and smuggler.
Now he's dying cancer. And in a final act of revenge-tinged contrition, he's testifying against Neely.
But Kimbler probably won't Neely make it to Neely's trial. Doctors at a prison hospital where Kimbler has been treated while serving a 15 year drug sentence say he'll likely be dead or too sick.
So Kimbler's testimony against Neely is being videotaped ahead of time. The highly unusual procedure was ordered by U.S. District Judge Jackson Kiser in Roanoke.
Kiser says it was necessary to prevent Kimbler's testimony from being lost forever. But, Kiser says, if Kimbler is able, he still will have to testify in person at the trial, scheduled to begin March 8.
Like virtually every one of the key witnesses against Neely, Kimbler is a convicted drug dealer. But what makes him such a valuable witness for prosecutors is that, unlike the rest, Kimbler no longer has much to gain by testifying for the government. The only thing he stands to get, other than absolution, is the opportunity to be freed from prison so he can go home to die in Homestead, Fla. Federal prosecutors in Roanoke have recommended that Florida let him go, and he is expected to be freed this week.
Tom Blaylock, Neely's attorney, says Kimbler is no slightly fallen angel looking for redemption. Kimbler, he says, is a corrupt ex-cop looking for a way out.
He didn't come forward to make a dying declaration, Blaylock says; rather, Kimbler agreed to sing on Neely long before he found out he was dying. He says Kimbler did it because he was promised immunity for any crimes he confessed. And, Blaylock says, Kimbler hoped his cooperation would help him get early release from a 15-year sentence he got in 1990 after police in Miami caught him in a motel room with a young woman, a kilo of cocaine and a gun.
Neely, who maintains he did nothing wrong but hang out with the wrong people, says Kimbler also may hold a grudge against him over a land deal. Hence the desire for revenge.
The only unique thing about Kimbler, Blaylock says, is that his testimony is being videotaped so it won't be lost if he dies. Other than that, he says, Kimbler is simply another sleazy crook, just like most of the other witnesses against Neely.
In Blaylock's opinion, Kimbler and most of the key witnesses are worse crooks than the government contends Neely is.
"They're an all-star team from the penitentiary," Blaylock says, and Kimbler is the quarterback.
Two of the other witnesses, Jamel Agemy and Mike Giacolone, are former Virginia Tech football players who were sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison in 1990 for their roles in a Montgomery County drug ring that smuggled in 1- and 2-pound packages of marijuana shaped like footballs.
The credibility of another witness, Leigh Hurst, is so questionable that a federal magistrate refused to consider his testimony against Neely at a probation violation hearing last year.
In exchange for their testimony, many of the witnesses against Neely have been offered reduced charges and sentences, Blaylock says. He believes the government is out to get Neely at all costs. "Personalities have gotten into it." he says. They're letting "the devils go to get the sinner."
Neely, 43, has brought much of the government's focus on himself. He is everything drug agents and prosecutors hate in a defense lawyer. His courtroom style is arrogant and flip. He defends drug dealers and profits from it. He likes to drive flashy sports cars, dresses in trendy "Miami Vice"-style suits, befriends drug dealers and has had an obvious problem with drug abuse.
In 1990, Neely pleaded guilty to possession of cocaine and admitted he had been in and out of treatment centers for drug and alcohol abuse. In a sordid display of what cocaine did to him, a secretly recorded video tape was described at his possession trial. Investigators said the video showed a drunken Neely, accompanied by a female informant, spreading cocaine on a coffee table and snorting it through a rolled-up $100 bill. He passed out afterwards.
Glen Conrad, the federal magistrate who accepted Neely's guilty plea to cocaine possession, placed Neely on two years probation and chastised him for leading a "notorious, high-profile" lifestyle.
Karen Peters, the assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting Neely, concedes that she finds Neely's conduct distasteful. But she says there's no truth to the allegation that she's on a personal vendetta. If she were, she says, she would have gone after him on a felony cocaine distribution charge after he gave the cocaine to the informant. But, she says, she decided to treat him like anybody else and let him off with a misdemeanor possession charge.
Although Peters said at the time that she thought Neely should be disbarred, he was able to keep his law license because a misdemeanor conviction does not result in an automatic loss of license. Although Neely still faces undisclosed Virginia State Bar disciplinary action, his license still is listed as "active and in good standing."
Peters declines to say why she's continuing prosecution of Neely. But the 14-count indictment she drafted indicates she believes she has considerable evidence showing that Neely is not just a sick addict, but a rogue lawyer who used his skill and position to promote drug trafficking and to corrupt justice.
The indictment accuses Neely of racketeering, cocaine dealing, money laundering, promoting a marijuana farm in a national forest, and corrupting the grand jury system by giving drugs to a grand jury court reporter to get inside information.
The government contends that Neely used his law office on Roanoke Street in Christiansburg to disguise drug profits and as a warehouse for multikilogram loads of cocaine.
But, much of the case against Neely rests on Kimbler and his account of numerous drug-smuggling trips he supposedly took in partnership with Neely between Florida and Christiansburg.
The two met in the fall of 1986, when Neely was one of nearly a dozen lawyers hired to defend members of the largest cocaine-smuggling operation ever busted in Virginia.
Among those eventually convicted in the case was Gerardo Caballero, the son-in-law of Roberto Suarez, a Bolivian land baron who at the time was considered the largest cocaine supplier in the world.
Neely defended a drug pilot named Carl Warmack, and Kimbler was a private eye working for an attorney representing Miami cocaine importers.
During the six-week trial, Neely and Kimbler became close friends. Court documents indicate that federal authorities believe Neely was high on cocaine during that trial. Warmack, the drug pilot Neely defended, ended up getting an 18-year sentence.
Federal authorities contend in court papers that after that trial, Neely and Kimbler became cocaine-smuggling partners. Court documents say Kimbler brought multikilogram amounts of cocaine from Florida to Virginia before he was sentenced in Florida in 1990. And, court officials say, while Kimbler was free on bond pending that trial, he stayed with Neely and continued the drug smuggling.
As a cover, records show, Kimbler acted as if he was working as a private investigator for Neely's law practice.
Harvey Robbins, the Miami lawyer who hired Kimbler for the Caballero smuggling case, says Kimbler had a good reputation as a private eye in Florida even though he had been forced out of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Robbins said he didn't know the exact reason Kimbler was forced out of the ATF, but records indicate that Kimbler was fired in 1984 after 15 years because he leaked confidential information to an outside contact. That leak resulted in an drug informant's cover being blown.
Although he found work as a private investigator, Kimbler was bitter over losing his job as an ATF agent. That bitterness led him to become a self-admitted rogue willing to deal in drugs, one court official familer with Kimbler says.
"It's one of those grand tragedies of life, and he went over to the dark side with the same vengeance he had on the right side."