Pubdate: Fri, 21 Oct 2005 Source: Miami Herald (FL) Copyright: 2005 The Miami Herald Contact: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/262 Author: Dan Christensen APPEALS COURT UPHOLDS KINGPIN SENTENCE An Appeals Court Backed The 30-Year Sentence Of A Colombian Drug Chieftain A federal appeals court in Atlanta Thursday upheld the 30-year drug trafficking sentence of Colombian drug lord Fabio Ochoa in Miami. At the same time, the three-judge panel that heard Ochoa's appeal warned South Florida federal judges that they must not secretly docket court cases to hide their existence from the public. Interim U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta hailed the ruling as a victory for his office. He also indicated his office would no longer be a party to secret court cases. ''Our nation can now enjoy a sense of finality in this matter,'' Acosta said in a prepared statement. ``The Office will comply with the Court's ruling regarding the sealing issue in all future proceedings.'' Medellin Cartel Ochoa, a leader of the Medellin drug cartel in the 1980s, was snared in the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's Operation Millennium probe in 1999, and was extradited from Colombia in 2001 to stand trial. Authorities say he was part of a conspiracy to smuggle in as much as 30 tons of cocaine a month via Mexico. Ochoa hired a defense team led by celebrity lawyer Roy Black of Miami and sought to admit evidence about an illegal bribes-for-leniency scheme. Ochoa contended it was a corrupt, government-run program, but prosecutors denied it and placed the blame on a renegade DEA informant. Ochoa appealed his May 2003 conviction arguing, among other things, that prosecutors and the courts had used a secret docketing system in the Southern District of Florida to suppress evidence in his case. The court's docketing system, Ochoa claimed, was used to shield prosecutions of possible defense witnesses with knowledge of a U.S.- backed bribes-for-leniency scheme that had victimized him. In one 2002 case cited by Ochoa, Miami U.S. District Judge Patricia Seitz convicted, sentenced and imprisoned Colombian drug dealer Nicolas Bergonzoli in complete secrecy. In its 84-page order, the appeals court rejected as ''unpersuasive'' Ochoa's claims that such secrecy had prejudiced his defense because a judge unsealed those dockets during his trial. But the court did invoke its supervisory authority ``to remind the district court that it cannot employ the secret docketing procedures.'' The appeals court noted it had explicitly declared such procedures unconstitutional a decade ago. The court also found that court orders sealing specific documents also violated the First Amendment by failing to explain why such extraordinary secrecy was necessary. Public Access Sanford Bohrer, a Miami First Amendment lawyer whose clients include The Miami Herald, said the ruling ``reaffirms the public's constitutional right to attend criminal trials and related proceedings, including the right to have a publicly accessible, unsealed docket showing the status of the case and what has been happening.'' The appeals court also approved the use of an anonymous jury to try Ochoa and turned aside Ochoa's arguments that such secrecy had allowed prosecutors to remove jurors in ``a racially discriminatory manner.'' Fear of threats and violence prompted the decision to use an anonymous jury. - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin