Pubdate: Fri, 02 Dec 2005 Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer (WA) Copyright: 2005 Seattle Post-Intelligencer Contact: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/408 Author: Gene Johnson, AP Legal Affairs Writer LAWYERS WHO ACCEPTED DRUG MONEY TO SERVE PRISON TIME SEATTLE -- Two criminal defense lawyers - one who served as a city judge, the other a prominent member of his church - were sentenced to prison time Friday for accepting drug money. The sentencing judge said he was deeply troubled by their conduct. U.S. District Judge Ricardo Martinez ordered James L. White, 49, a practicing lawyer and judge in Edmonds, to serve a year and a half in prison. White pleaded guilty to one count of money laundering, and admitted accepting $250,000 in tainted money from a drug trafficker he represented. White admitted delivering $20,000 in cash to fellow lawyer and friend A. Mark Vanderveen, to retain Vanderveen's services in representing another suspected drug runner. Vanderveen, 46, a former Snohomish County deputy prosecutor who sometimes preaches at his Lutheran church in Kirkland, was sentenced to three months in jail, three months of home confinement, 250 hours of community service and a $10,000 fine. "The effect of this, whether intended or not, was to facilitate the operation of this criminal organization," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Ron Friedman. Both defendants wept in court and apologized as dozens of friends and family members watched. They received some leniency for cooperating once they were caught, though Vanderveen's sentence was longer than the one month recommended by prosecutors. Both will be disbarred. The case has spawned an investigation of possible similar conduct by a small number of other Seattle-area lawyers, though no one else has yet been charged. Last spring, White was approached at his office by Robert Kesling, who was under investigation as a major player in a drug ring that ran cocaine and marijuana between the United States and Canada. Kesling gave White a backpack that contained $100,000, bundled with rubber bands, to secure White's representation, and White accepted it - even though he knew it was drug money. White later took $20,000 of the money and gave it to Vanderveen to represent one of Kesling's couriers, Wesley Cornett. White handed over half the money in a parking lot, and left the other half sitting on his chair at the Edmonds courthouse, where Vanderveen picked it up - - a detail that particularly bothered Martinez. At one point last spring, after federal agents seized $1 million worth of marijuana from a trailer Kesling had parked in Woodinville, White and Vanderveen became suspicious that Cornett was acting as an informant. They followed him and tried to force him to take a polygraph test to determine whether he was cooperating with federal agents; the polygrapher refused to ask the questions, deeming them improper. Martinez noted that if Kesling or others in the drug ring had learned from the lawyers that Cornett was cooperating - which he was - Cornett could have been killed. "Drug dealers do not take kindly to the loss of millions of dollars of product," Martinez said. The judge called the defendants "intelligent, educated, sophisticated attorneys" and said for that, he held them to a higher standard. Vanderveen pleaded guilty to failing to report his receipt of cash in excess of $10,000. Cornett was sentenced last month to three years in prison after pleading guilty to drug charges. Kesling has also pleaded guilty to drug counts and is to be sentenced Dec. 9. During a sentencing hearing last month in the case of Douglas Spink, another of Kesling's runners, the federal prosecutor said that with regard to the payments to attorneys, "I'm turning a light on in the room and it's exposing some conduct that perhaps wasn't illuminated before. ... And it's frankly generated a lot of conversation in the legal community. "And the discussion is good, because the discussion serves as a reminder to all of us that we ... need to make sure that we're all doing our jobs, you know, in an ethical way," Friedman said. Defense attorney David Gehrke, who represents a low-level player in the drug ring, said the laws White and Vanderveen broke were no-brainers, and that the overwhelming majority of the defense bar didn't need a reminder. "We know it," Gehrke said. "It's like, do you need a reminder not to step in front of a speeding locomotive?" - --- MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman