Now those prosecutions themselves are on the brink and one of the Feds’ brightest stars stands accused of misconduct. In recent weeks two federal judges have thrown out six convictions and ordered retrials because, they contend, Hogan obtained turncoat testimony with more than the usual plea bargains. Extensive post-trial hearings portray some former informers’ jail time as a sex-and-drugs bonanza. Some of the most damning testimony has come from the informers themselves. And, most damning, the two judges asserted that Hogan not only knew of jailhouse misbehavior but helped conceal it. Last week a third judge ended yet another hearing into prosecutorial conduct. Hogan denies all of the charges. Appearing last week before U.S. district court Judge Marvin Aspen, Hogan coolly rebutted one allegation after another.
The charges are the stuff of tabloid dreams. In return for their cooperation, informers were allegedly permitted to use heroin and cocaine in prison and to have sexual contact with wives and girlfriends sometimes even in the privacy of government offices. The witnesses were allegedly provided such goodies as free phone service, beer and radio headsets, the latter used to bring drugs into jail. One fellow inmate testified that an El Rukn was allowed to perform oral sex on a female inmate by poking his head through the food-tray slot of her cell door. Henry (Toomba) Harris, the government’s key informer, even accused Hogan of coaching him to he.
Hogan’s lawyer says the allegations have been cooked up by witnesses now unhappy with the long prison sentences they got in plea bargains. The witnesses are hardly model citizens: they’re all doing time, they’ve all demonstrated their keen ability to switch loyalties. Nonetheless, the same U.S. Justice Department that last year selected Hogan, 42, to help establish a violent-crime task force in Los Angeles now has FBI agents probing his conduct.
So far, Justice officials have spent less time disputing charges against Hogan than saying they’re irrelevant. Even if favoritism toward cooperating witnesses had been established during trial, the federal government argues, the defendants still would have been convicted. U.S. district judges James Holderman and Suzanne Conlon disagreed. In his order granting three new trials, an angry Holderman described “a silent agreement between the government and its El Rukn witnesses: lenience as to the illegal drug use in exchange for testimony.” By suppressing that and other evidence, he wrote, prosecutors unconstitutionally insulated their witnesses from cross-examination by the defendants’ lawyers.
The 1991-1992 convictions were the endgame of an eight-year investigation of El Rukn and its multimillion-dollar drug empire. The gang’s infamous history dates to the 1960s, when it began as a pack of adolescents who robbed for the fun of it. Known as the Blackstone Rangers, the gang briefly became the darling of white liberals eager to help disadvantaged youths. They appeared to go straight, performing public service for the community. But in 1972 the group’s reputed leader, Jeff Fort, was convicted of swindling the government out of $1 million in anti-poverty funds, and 15 years later he was convicted of plotting terrorist acts for Muammar Kaddafi. By the late ’70s, the group had renamed itself El Rukn, Arabic for “the foundation.” Hogarn’s indictment detailed much of what the gang had wrought: 24 years of murders, narcotics racketeering, intimidation and mayhem.
The Feds say they will appeal the Holderman and Conlon orders granting new trials. And Aspen could muddle matters further by denying new trials to the convicts in his court. If the convicts wind up prevailing, the government most likely would attempt to bargain for shorter sentences rather than go through more trials.
In the strange world of criminal justice, Hogan probably had no choice but to use slimeball informers. “This case is crumbling because the witnesses are of such low moral character,” says Northwestern University law professor Ronald Allen. “But that’s no reason to criticize the government.” Well, that’s up to federal appellate judges now. With some 75,000 pages of trial and post-trial testimony to peruse, those judges will have to decide whether Hogan paid too high a price. Or whether the El Rukns have pulled their greatest scam ever.
