Pubdate: Sun, 18 Feb 2001
Source: San Antonio Express-News (TX)
Copyright: 2001 San Antonio Express-News
Contact:  400 3rd St., San Antonio, TX 78287-2171
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Author: Maro Robbins, Express-News Staff Writer

OFFICER'S LIES SINK 2 CASES

Federal prosecutors have dismissed two cocaine cases and scaled back a 
third because an undercover police officer lied about his information 
source in a sworn statement requesting search warrants.

Two of the case dismissals came in the days before and after the San 
Antonio Police Department stiffened its penalty for officers caught lying 
in the line of duty.

Although department leaders said the officer's conduct did not prompt the 
policy change, they acknowledge that Officer Carlos Ancira's misstatement, 
however well-intentioned, is the kind they hope to deter by making lying, 
once generally punished by a 15-day suspension, a firing offense.

Known in police slang as "testilying," officers lying under oath have 
scandalized more than one city's police department in recent years and, 
some fear, have bruised the credibility of badge-wearers everywhere.

San Antonio has remained untouched but for a few instances, prosecutors 
say. In contrast to scandals such as that in Los Angeles' Rampart Division, 
where officers are accused of planting evidence, the recent episode in San 
Antonio is described by authorities and experts as relatively benign.

All the same, it illustrates that even seemingly innocuous falsehoods can 
cripple criminal cases.

"It was a stupid mistake," said U.S. Attorney Bill Blagg, who oversees 
federal prosecutions from San Antonio to El Paso.

Although depicted as well-meaning and relatively minor, the false statement 
prompted a federal judge to alert police brass. It also led to a transfer 
to night patrol for Ancira, a seven-year member of the San Antonio Police 
Department.

He escaped formal disciplinary action because the case reached the chief's 
desk after the deadline for taking action, Assistant Police Chief Albert 
Ortiz said.

Ancira did not respond to an interview request communicated through the San 
Antonio Police Officers Association. Department policy forbids officers 
from publicly discussing disciplinary matters, a police spokesman said.

The controversy sprouted from two search warrants Ancira applied for on 
July 11, 2000. Those warrants led to separate arrests and indictments 
against Robert Steen and a friend, Bobby Phillips Jr.

Three months later, the case against Steen abruptly unraveled at a court 
hearing when the woman who Ancira claimed was his confidential information 
source testified she had never talked to Ancira about any previous case.

The informant was Steen's common-law wife, who in a jealous snit had 
pointed police to what she said was her husband's cocaine, officers said. 
But, after spawning the case when she was angry, the wife essentially 
destroyed it after she reconciled with Steen, the father of her child and 
whose name she bears on a tattoo.

Court testimony showed that, in requesting search warrants, Ancira had 
sworn he learned of the cocaine from someone who had given him reliable 
information before. In fact, Ancira never spoke to Steen's wife before 
investigating the case against Steen.

At one point, U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia interrupted the hearing to 
question Ancira in his chambers, emerging about a half-hour later 
apparently agitated, observers said. The judge later notified Assistant 
Chief Ortiz about the misleading warrant.

By distorting the source of his tip, legal experts say, Ancira robbed the 
magistrate of the ability to judge the tip's reliability — an essential 
ingredient in a search warrant that gives police the power, if necessary, 
to break down doors.

Experts differ on whether Ancira could have obtained the warrant if he told 
the whole truth: that his information came secondhand from a colleague. But 
the question is academic; he didn't.

In court, Ancira said he did not believe his statement amounted to, in the 
prosecutor's words, "an untruth." He later told internal affairs 
investigators that he obscured the facts to protect the informant's 
identity, Ortiz said.

Ortiz and prosecutors said that was a shortsighted reason because the 
informant's name would eventually have come out in court.

"These shortcuts, or thinking that you can take these shortcuts — this is 
exactly the kind of conduct we would like to prevent in the future," Ortiz 
said. "That was the main thrust of the chief's raising the bar (on the 
penalty for lying)."

Days after the court hearing, prosecutors dropped Steen's case rather than 
defend Ancira's warrant, said Richard Durbin, chief of the U.S. Attorney's 
criminal division.

"To put it in its best light, it was sloppy," Durbin said.

Last month, federal prosecutors also dropped the related charge against 
Phillips. Another count is still pending against Phillips but it is in 
jeopardy because of an unrelated search-warrant dispute. Furthermore, the 
government on Feb. 8 dismissed another case involving a half-ounce of crack 
cocaine.

No one suspected Ancira lied in the third case, but he was the only witness 
to the alleged drug deal, Durbin said. Prosecutors feared that, tainted by 
the Steen and Phillips cases, his credibility might not survive 
cross-examination by defense lawyers.

Durbin said the U.S. Attorney's Office has found few instances of federal 
cases dismissed due to law enforcement officers lying. The previous one in 
San Antonio occurred about five years ago, he said.

Similarly, First Assistant District Attorney Michael Bernard said he 
believes local prosecutors had dealt with only one such incident since the 
current administration took office in 1999. Police internal affairs 
investigated, he said, and the officer resigned.

 From one perspective, the recent episode offers a bleak bottom line. 
Ancira hobbled his own work. As a result, either drug traffickers 
sidestepped severe prosecutions or two people suffered legally baseless 
detention and accusations.

What prevailed is less tangible but hardly trivial, said Geary Reamey, a 
St. Mary's University criminal law professor.

The prosecutions, he said, bowed to the Fourth Amendment guarantee that the 
government can't use its power recklessly to break down doors and search 
under mattresses.
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