ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, March 27, 1997 TAG: 9703270041
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NORFOLK
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
In exchange for his testimony, witness Gary Weathers was allowed to have sex in a federal government office.
Three convicted drug dealers have been released from prison because a prisoner was allowed to have sex in a federal government office in exchange for testimony against them.
The sentences of four other members of the Portsmouth drug ring were substantially reduced because federal agents did not disclose the conjugal visits to the court, and jurors were told there was no sex-for-testimony deal with witness Gary Weathers.
``The law requires the government to disclose matters that might reflect on the credibility of government witnesses,'' local FBI director Larry Torrence said Tuesday.
Bruce E. Boone Sr., convicted for his role in a Portsmouth gang that sold $20 million in heroin from 1984 to 1989, was freed Tuesday from a life sentence.
Torrence said Boone's case was not retried because it would be hard to reconstruct the case nearly 10 years after the investigation.
Two other men convicted in the case, Samuel Collins Jr., serving a life sentence, and William Kenneth Banks, serving a 25-year sentence, were released Nov. 14.
The agents involved were James Watters of the FBI and Richard McGoldrick of the Drug Enforcement Administration. Watters was a lead investigator in the drug case. When the issue of sexual favors came up at trial in 1990, Watters did not correct the judge when he told the jury the favors had never been granted, court papers show.
Weathers was permitted to have about a half-dozen ``lunches'' with his wife or a girlfriend in the Drug Enforcement Administration office in Norfolk in May and June of 1990, court papers show. Agents always knocked, then hesitated before entering the room.
Watters did not initially arrange for Weathers' sexual favors. But when he became aware of them, he did nothing to stop them, according to court papers. Watters sometimes would leave McGoldrick to guard the door while Weathers' wife or girlfriend visited.
Defense attorneys discovered the arrangement after Weathers' wife gave birth to twins in 1991 and named him as the father. Weathers had been imprisoned since 1989.
Lawyers for the men convicted by Weathers' testimony began filing motions in 1994, asking for new trials.
Watters and McGoldrick are still on the job pending the outcome of a Justice Department investigation begun in 1994. McGoldrick has been transferred to Chicago. The investigation apparently was completed last year, but the results have not been released.
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