Rogue informant leaves trail of botched drug sting

The government’s drug sting was based on a tips from Jerrell Bray, a small-time operator who offered his services to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

CLEVELAND (AP) — Wes Ballard is trying to put his life back together after serving 10 months in jail because of a tainted drug operation involving a dishonest informant and a federal agent whose conduct is facing multiple investigations.

Ballard and 25 other people were arrested in an investigation meant to clean up the drug trade in Mansfield, a blue-collar city between Cleveland and Columbus, but instead left a trail of legal fallout that could affect the way the government pursues drug dealers.

Last month the government asked a federal judge to dismiss charges — including conspiracy and cocaine trafficking — against most of the people who had pleaded guilty or been convicted.

“I don’t trust these people here,” Ballard, 33, said of law enforcement authorities.

The government’s drug sting was based on a tips from Jerrell Bray, a small-time operator who offered his services to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Bray, 34, has admitted to a fabric of lies meant to polish his informant credentials and keep suspects flowing through the court system. He’s serving 15 years for perjury and civil rights violations against the individuals targeted in his role as an informant.

Ballard said Bray’s allegations against him came out of the blue. He said he saw Bray at a church-sponsored auto show but never met him.

After spending nearly a year in jail awaiting trial, Ballard was acquitted last year by a jury skeptical of Bray’s testimony. Bray’s description of Ballard’s height was off by 8 inches.

Others didn’t fare as well: a Mansfield mother was convicted of being a drug courier and spent 16 months in prison before her case was thrown out last May.

Lewis Katz, a law professor at Cleveland’s Case Western Reserve University, said the botched cases highlight the risks of working with informants and compared them to unreliable jail snitches hoping to win a shorter sentence.

While police sometimes must rely on informants, “It is very disturbing that they simply accepted this person’s claim against so many defendants,” Katz said.

Katz said prosecutors sometimes fail to assess an informant’s reliability in their zeal to lock up criminals.

“Once they get in the competitive atmosphere of a prosecution, unfortunately too many prosecutors fail to second-guess their own evidence,” Katz said.

The Justice Department has started an internal investigation on DEA Agent Lee Lucas, who handled Bray’s undercover work. The DEA also is investigating along with a grand jury probe directed by an outside prosecutor assigned from Pennsylvania.

The DEA won’t comment on Bray or Lucas.

“This is a very good agency,” said DEA spokesman Michael Sanders in Washington, D.C. “We have a very good record with confidential sources but every once in a while you will get a bad one out there.”

Anti-drug investigations pose a special problem for investigators, Sanders said. Drug dealers typically won’t have anything to do with someone they don’t know, a tactic meant to prevent infiltration by a government agent or informant, he said.

That often leads to the government’s reliance on an informant who, in effect, agrees to snitch on people, often in return for lenient treatment in his own legal problems.

“We use them extensively, as do all of the other federal agencies,” Sanders said. Most field agents are expected to have at least one informant, he said.

Bray was enlisted as an informant in 2005 and agreed to obey the law, avoid entrapping suspects, avoid personal use of illegal drugs and follow the directives of his DEA handler.

John McCaffrey, an attorney for Bray, said his client is doing his part to make amends.

“He has been sentenced. He has accepted responsibility for his involvement in these Mansfield cases and he is cooperating with the special assistant U.S. attorney who is conducting an ongoing investigation,” McCaffrey said. Bray won’t accept interview requests, McCaffrey said.

Ballard and others have filed a civil lawsuit against Lucas, a 17-year veteran who has worked in Bolivia battling drug traffickers.

His attorney, Joel Kirkpatrick of Farmington Hills, Mich., said Lucas would defend himself in court on the civil matter but would not comment on the ongoing review of the drug investigation.

U.S. Attorney Greg White, whose staff of 75 federal prosecutors in northern Ohio prosecuted the drug cases in court, said he was satisfied that his staff had acted in good faith. Prosecutors asked the judge to reverse any damage once wrongdoing was disclosed, he said.

“Our feeling was, as a matter of fundamental fairness we needed to do this and we did,” White said. He cautioned against concluding that “everyone was wrongfully charged,” but declined to detail how many of the 13 who pleaded guilty were innocent.

“This is not the finest hour of the justice system for sure. However, I think we’ve done our best to make that right,” White said.