Send lawyers, guns, and money.

Every now and then, my friends, lawyers get it right. And I have two examples -- I've been meaning to talk about the first one for a bit, and reading about the second one triggered the post. And, just because The Universe Has A Sense Of Humor, they both have ties to Iran-Contra. Fun, no?


The first example -- in the dying days of Bush II, the United States of America decided that Ben Kuehne, a prominent lawyer in Miami (who, surely coincidentally, was one of the lawyers who represented the Gore campaign during the 2000 election litigation), should be prosecuted for laundering drug money. Why? Because he gave a legal opinion that an alleged drug dealer had non drug related assets to sell to pay another lawyer (Roy Black, of the William Kennedy Smith trial) for his defense in the criminal trial. (Whew. Does that sentence make sense? Alleged drug dealer has property in Colombia, sells it to pay for Roy, Ben is hired to review to make sure it's Not Coke proceeds, says it's not -- Ok, I think so.) Then a different drug dealer turned snitch says to the feds: "No way, man. That was totally drug money." Ben gets charged, despite the fact that the money laundering statute says pretty clearly that a lawyer gets paid with tainted money is not guilty of money laundering. It may be money that she has to give back at some point in a forfeiture proceeding, but whatever.


Fortunately, Ben had good lawyers. And federal judges who understood the law. And a Justice Department who finally realized this was not the sort of case that the United States of America should be spending its limited amount of law enforcement time and resources on. The WSJ Law Blog lays the whole Ben Kuehne story out here.


The Iran Contra connection? One of Ben's lawyers was John Nields, who was chief counsel for the House's Iran Contra investigatory committee. And there's a bonus! Two of Nields's daughters have a band that is one of my favorites in the "chicks with guitars" genre of singer-songwriters. And they (well, mostly Nerissa) have a blog! (Note to self -- must add it to the blogroll.)


Second story -- read this WSJ Law Blog post about plea bargains and innocent people pleading guilty. The background is the criminal investigation and trials of members of management at Broadcom (remember that company?) who allegedly violated all sorts of the securities laws. One of them decided to go to trial, and the government -- our government -- basically browbeat a bunch of others at Broadcom in an attempt to get them to testify at trial in a certain way. Read the transcript of the ruling by the federal judge who dismissed the charges here. Those Broadcom guys and gals were lucky that they were able to have lawyers good enough and dogged enough to get the judge to look at what actually happened. It's scary, frankly, that this happens.

The Iran Contra connection? One of the Broadcom defendants was represented by Oliver North's lawyer Brendan Sullivan, famed throughout the land for his immortal line "I am not a potted plant!" (directed at Senator Daniel Inoyue, when the senator grew annoyed at Sullivan's objections during the hearings).