Hello all,

I'm new to the site but I was hoping to get some insight for my husband's situation.

My husband was listed in a "conspiracy" drug charge that involved him and two other people. He was approached by an FBI agent to come in for questioning. He did not go - we went to a lawyer instead.

The lawyer talked to the FBI agent & told us about the conspiracy charge. He said that the grand jury did not have enough info to come pick up my husband - just some phone records and his name written in a log. Since will be his third offense - our lawyer says it would be best to work with the agents and not go to trial.

So my husband has done a proffer agreement and is currently working as an FBI informant. He doesn't share too much about his double work.

We can no longer afford our lawyer. We are hiring him for pre-indictment services. But it doesn't seem as if he's doing much. All he says is to do whatever the FBI agent tells him to do.

I talked with someone else and she suggested that my husband volunteers as a mentor or other urban community programs to collect character witnesses for his sentencing.

We have 2 young kids that love their father to death. I am worried about our future as a family so I am hoping for the best but trying to brace myself for the worst.

My husband has not been indicted yet but I just would like an outside opinion of what is in store for this family and if there's anything more we can do to keep him out of prison.

Thanks a lot for any answers you can give.

1. This is serious so talk to your attorney, the following is only my opinion.

a. grand jury, in many you can get a monkey charged, so if they did not have enough evidence for a grand jury, unless one of the other criminals testified against him, I doubt they even had a case.

b. did the attorney and your husband talk to the Federal DA and have a written agreement in place so that he is not charged with things he is doing as a informant, and that all other charges would be droped or probation given in return.
The FBI agent has no authority to make a deal.

No character witness have little or no value at trial, most likely can't even testify until the sentencing stage, only people that have information about the actual crime testify at trial, the character witness would testify at the sentence hearing.

And while I understand, remember drug people are not Sunday school teachers ( OK maybe some are) but they are dangerous people, how much future will your family has when he has to stand up in court and testify against them, and/or they find out he is giving information to the FBI.

I have a close family member who did 4 years in prison before he would give any info on the higher up drug people, since they figured their life would be worthless if they did.

The time to have worried and this will sound real mean is before he got invovled with drug people.

Hello mom:

I think the Padre is right. They had no case. I've heard of bad lawyers - this guy is the worst. He sold your husband down the river.

Some people only snitch when the cops have got the goods on them and they're for sure going to spend a lot of time in prison. Although snitching is a vile thing to do, I can understand it when people facing YEARS in the slam, snitch to stay free. Your husband wasn't facing a thing.

Additionally, the proffer agreement your husband entered into will explicitly state that no promises of either immunity or a plea bargain have been made. Accordingly, his attorney and the prosecutor should have already informally worked out, before he ever sits down for the proffer session, a basic understanding of: 1) what he is likely to proffer; and, 2) what the contemplated post-proffer immunity or plea agreement will look like.

That apparently wasn't done.

To the extent that either part of this informal understanding is not perfectly clear to your husband, his attorney, and the federal prosecutor, he is heading into exceedingly dangerous territory. Why? Because, proffering will almost always harm him if post-proffer immunity/plea discussions fall apart and the government decides to indict him. For the same reason, if the prosecutor is not trustworthy or if he is not prepared to tell the complete truth, the proffer session should never take place.

Why are proffers so risky, since his words are not supposed to be used against him at a subsequent trial? To begin with, unlike immunity or plea agreements, proffer agreements do not prevent the government from making derivative use of his statements. In other words, although the government cannot use his actual proffer session statements against him in its case-in-chief, it can use the information that he provides to follow up leads and conduct further investigations.

If those leads and further investigations capture new evidence, such evidence can be used to indict and convict him. Even if the prosecutor is not able to develop new information from his proffer, he will gain a tactical advantage from seeing (at the proffer session) how he fares under the pressure of tough questioning, how he presents himself as a witness and, most importantly, what his theory of the case is. This will better prepare him to build his evidence against your husband and to cross-examine him at trial, should he choose to testify, and will thus boost his self-confidence. Moreover, if, like many suspects, he implicates himself in criminal activity during the proffer session, and your husband will, the prosecutor will feel better about prosecuting him, because he will "know" in his heart of hearts that he is guilty.

If the Assistant US Attorney believes that he lied during his proffer session, he can indict him under Section 1001 of the federal criminal code for false statements to the government.

But there are even bigger risks in proffering. Virtually all proffer agreements allow the government to use his statements against him for impeachment purposes if he takes the stand in a subsequent proceeding and testify inconsistently with his proffer. And the version of the proffer that will be compared to his trial testimony, in order to see whether he should be impeached, is the version that was interpreted and written down by government agents. More ominously, in recent years many government-drafted proffer agreements allow use of his statements against him if any part of his defense, including questions his lawyer asks of government witnesses on cross-examination, is inconsistent with his proffer. These broadly worded agreements, which have been consistently upheld at the federal circuit court level, may effectively deny your husband the right to present a defense at trial if his anticipated post-proffer immunity or plea deal does not come through. Why? Because if any part of his defense is deemed to be inconsistent with his proffer, and if that proffer implicates him in any way, the entire proffer will be admitted against him at trial. Thus, his attorney may find herself in the unenviable position of failing to contest key portions of the government's case, declining to cross-examine certain witnesses and choosing not to put him on the stand, all in an effort to prevent his damaging proffer statements from coming before the jury.

Proposed proffer agreements should be examined with great care. His attorney, in my view, failed that duty.

Too bad. You should have shopped better. Now, when he gets to the slam, he's going to be locked up 23 hours a day in protective custody. Bummer.

excon

To my knowledge the Lawyer did not make a deal with the Federal DA for charges to be dropped or immunity.

I'm now convinced that our Lawyer is a lazy greedy thief. He convinced us to believe that our only chances was to work with the FBI agent and do whatever he says.

My question now is: Is there anything we can do now? Can we demand to make arrangements with the DA?

What happens if we stop working with the Agent?

Is it too late to go to trial if they didn't have much to begin with - the proffer is not supposed to be used against him.

What can he do - if anything to minimize time?

Thanks for your advice.

Well first this is only excon and my opinion, we are not attorneys, what you should do now is get a very good criminal attorney, someone who only does or specialises in federal crimiinal law. Not a home town attorney who does wills, criminal caes, civil cases and more. ( not saying that is what you used)

But first there is no trial to go to, there was not enough evicence to go to trial, the DA could not get a grand jury to press charges before.
So unless your husband confessed and gave them enough evidence, they still should not have enough, After they charged him would have been the time to start working a deal to give evidence if you were going to.

Now here is the issue, once you start doing this for them, they will use you and use you. And if you want to stop they are not going to be happy, and most likely if they are not happy, they will try very hard now to make you unhappy.

And you can not ever "demand" arrangements, all they have to do is laugh and say no, all the DA has to do is say they were not aware of any deal the FBI made and that the FBI is not in a position to do deals,
They are even allowed to lie to you , to get you to confess.

Next you keep talking about time, if there is no evidence to go to trial, there is no time