The Law Won

Two former narcotics agents win big in a lawsuit against Pa. Attorney General Mike Fisher.

For Sparky McLaughlin and Charlie Micewski, the road from perdition is the snow-swept Northeast Extension, southbound from Wilkes-Barre on a cold Friday night in February.

The two men have traveled plenty in the seven years of their exile, but none of those journeys were as sweet as this.

McLaughlin and Micewski are former partners in an elite narcotics unit credited with seizing millions of dollars' worth of drugs and guns and properties from Philadelphia dealers. They're heading home, vindicated five years after having been taken off the streets by the state Attorney General's office (OAG) and reassigned to desk jobs far from their homes. The reason for their exile: They refused to stop complaining about how their careers were ruined after a run-in with the CIA. Their saga was first reported by City Paper more then two years ago in a two-part series called The Dominican Connection.

In the fall of 1995, McLaughlin and Micewski, who were working for the OAG's Bureau of Narcotics Investigations (BNI), discovered that a State Department-backed Dominican Republic political party was raising campaign funds for its presidential candidate by selling heroin and cocaine in Philadelphia, New York and Massachusetts.

In late March 1996, they, along with DEA agents in New York, tried to seize a half-million dollars in campaign funds from the visiting presidential candidate Jose Francisco Pena Gomez, claiming the money came from drug deals. The attempted seizure was called off by the State Department. Two weeks later, in April 1996, then-U.S. Attorney Mike Stiles and District Attorney Lynne Abraham told the OAG that they would no longer prosecute cases brought to them by McLaughlin and Micewski or use their testimony, essentially ending their careers as narcotics investigators. Eventually, the prosecutors refused to bring to trial more than 80 accused drug offenders investigated by McLaughlin and Micewski -- even though two separate investigations, one by Deputy Attorney General Eric Noonan and one by the FBI -- found that the officers had done nothing wrong and even though Abraham's chief assistant, Arnold Gordon, admitted in court that he might have unfairly stigmatized the agents.

McLaughlin and Micewski -- later dubbed the "Bastard Squad" by an OAG supervisor -- fought to clear their names.

They made their case in memos and in grievances and, eventually, in a lawsuit, filed Oct. 14, 1997, alleging that "a Dominican drug organization, through the protection of certain persons in the State Department and the CIA, was effective in having plaintiff's law enforcement efforts stopped and their careers destroyed."

Less than a month later, McLaughlin and Micewski were transferred to busy-work jobs in the hinterlands: McLaughlin to Greensberg; Micewski to Wilkes-Barre.

On Oct. 2, 1998, they filed a retaliation suit, claiming that Attorney General Mike Fisher and his command -- who inherited the Bastard Squad problem when Fisher took office in January 1997 -- used those transfers, and other forms of mistreatment, as punishment for filing the first suit.

"Un-bee-reevable," McLaughlin says, pondering what has just transpired as Micewski drives a steady 65 down the Northeast Extension.

It is shortly after 10:30 p.m., five days after they came up to Wilkes-Barre to finally have their day in court, and the shock is just now starting to fade.

An hour earlier, an eight-member federal jury in Wilkes-Barre decided that Attorney General Mike Fisher and members of his senior staff must pay the two former investigators a total of $1.5 million as punishment for retaliating against them. The verdict is a huge victory, wiping away the stain of seven years of rumor and innuendo.

"We won," Micewski shouts enthusiastically into his cell phone, providing an update to another in a parade of calls from the curious and congratulatory. "After seven years, I am getting my life back."

McLaughlin, a nervous passenger forced to ride shotgun in his own SUV because of long-standing back problems, anxiously grips the bar over his head.

The jury, which is about to spend a week in Courtroom 1 of the Max Rosenn Federal Courthouse in Wilkes-Barre, the only such facility to be named for a living judge, knows none of the Bastard Squad's history when it is impaneled.

All they know is that McLaughlin and Micewski claim their First Amendment rights were violated by Fisher and his senior staff -- First Deputy AG Gerald Pappert, Chief of the Office of Criminal Investigations David Kwait, Deputy BNI chief James Caggiano, Assistant Deputy BNI chief Charles Warner -- as well as by human services director Bruce Sarteschi.

Despite vociferous protests from the plaintiffs, one of the most critical pieces of evidence supporting McLaughlin and Micewski -- the Eric Noonan report -- is not allowed into evidence by U.S. District Court Judge A. Richard Caputo.

"That is very frustrating," McLaughlin says shortly before the trial begins on Mon., Feb. 3, with opening statements from plaintiff's attorney Sam Stretton and defense counsel Bob Hoffman. "The Noonan report totally clears us."

Stretton's opening relies heavily on allegations made in the Bastard Squad's first lawsuit charging that the U.S. government conspired with Dominican drug dealers. Reading numerous sections from the Oct. 14, 1997, suit, Stretton points out to the jury that it is not their job to judge the merits of that suit, just whether its filing so enraged Fisher and his subordinates that they engaged in a nasty campaign of retribution.

Hoffman opens his case by pointing out that everyone has the right to sue, "no matter how silly." He says that the defendants took no actions based on that suit, which stemmed from a long-standing problem that Fisher inherited and tried to rectify for the benefit of the plaintiffs and the OAG.

On the contrary, Hoffman claims, Fisher and his co-defendants gave McLaughlin and Micewski "temporary" five-year transfers to the Greensberg and Wilkes-Barre offices of OAG's Regulatory Compliance and Intelligence unit because they'd refused a permanent transfer to Norristown.

Monday afternoon, the jury sees McLaughlin break down on the stand. He begins to weep as he recalls how he was ordered to drive more than 300 miles to Greensberg -- or face immediate termination -- the day his father had a heart attack. He talks about how his reputation was tarnished and his will broken by his bosses.

The jury hears from Norman McGinnis, a supervisory agent in Regulatory Compliance and Intelligence. McGinnis complains bitterly that he was told to treat the two men differently and that he was never told the real reason they were reassigned.

Defendants Pappert, Kwait, Caggiano, Warner (who would be dismissed from the suit after closing arguments) and Sarteschi, as well as William Ryan, an OAG supervisor not named in the suit, testify that the Oct. 14, 1997 lawsuit had nothing to do with their decision to transfer McLaughlin and Micewski and that they did so for the benefit of the agents and the office.

Stretton, the plaintiffs' attorney, later introduces a memo from Sarteschi to Pappert, written June 10, 1997, before the first lawsuit was filed. The memo considered four options, including dismissal, which was rejected because the agents' ratings were too high. Transfers to Greensberg or Wilkes-Barre weren't among the options listed.

Perhaps even more telling, Stretton argues, Pappert scribbled notes onto the memo.

"Break up," Pappert wrote. "Tight leash/supervision. Write up frequently. Tell them their careers as investigators are over."

When it is his turn to take the stand, Micewski also breaks down and cries. He points a finger at the defendants huddled in the far right corner of Courtroom 1 as he talks about the pain of missing his family while assigned to Wilkes-Barre.

"Sir, I am disgraced," Micewski says, wagging his finger. "I was a cop. They took it away from me. I don't know nothing else."

Perhaps most interesting is how the two men differ on their version of events surrounding whether the FBI would relocate to BNI's Essington Avenue headquarters.

It is a key point for the plaintiffs, who have argued that Stiles was out to get them and was refusing to allow the FBI into Essington Avenue if McLaughlin and Micewski remained there.

In the morning, Stiles testifies that he was not overly concerned about the Bastard Squad's presence at Essington Avenue.

"Did Mr. Stiles in any way concur or not object to Essington Avenue having the presence of my clients?" Stretton asks.

"He did not," answers Fisher. "Mr. Stiles was not willing. Your statement is incorrect."

Stretton is masterful, laying out the case point by point, showing the jury that his clients were under fire for years. He also succeeds in convincing Judge Caputo -- whose performance is a virtuoso demonstration of fairness -- to allow the jury to read the original lawsuit, with the Noonan report.

For the defendants, Bob Hoffman argues that they are professionals and that "professionals aren't bothered by lawsuits."

No one knows how long they will be out. No one knows how long the judge will keep them, what with the bad weather and the threat of more snow.

The defendants still in the courtroom are told by Hoffman to go home. They follow his instructions, striding out confidently.

In conference room 109, Stretton and his co-counsel, Don Bailey, eat pizza with Bailey's wife and their investigator, Anthony Marceca, who was the central figure in the Filegate scandal back when Clinton first took office.

Across the hall, in conference room 184, Hoffman lies on a couch, his shoes off. He is talking on his cell phone.

Most times it's Caputo's aide taking a cigarette break. She informs the stragglers that the courthouse is located in a pretty bad neighborhood and that prostitutes have been known to sell themselves just outside.

The jurors filter into the courtroom and hand Caputo their verdict. The judge flips through the pages, a look of mild surprise on his face.

The room is silent. Everyone is tense as the juror sitting closest to the plaintiffs continues doing what she's done through the whole trial -- stare at McLaughlin and Micewski.

Fisher, Pappert and Kwait are hit for a total of $425,000 in actual damages and, even more damning, $1 million in punitive damages.

Micewski does a little half-jump and the two men hug each other and sob some more.

On their way out of the jury room, two jurors apologize to the agents for their ordeal.

Obviously dejected, Hoffman heads for conference room 184 to phone Fisher and Pappert, who are attending a State Republican Committee meeting.

He can't comment on the case, but three days later Sean Connolly, one of Fisher's spokesmen, does.

"We intend to pursue all our post-trial and appellate remedies," he says. "Beyond that, we can't comment. It is still in litigation."

"That is what our attorneys are working on right now," he says, adding that "we were certainly surprised by the jury's verdict and we respectfully disagree with it."

Driving down the Northeast Extension, heading straight out of perdition, Sparky McLaughlin and Charlie Micewski are in total agreement with the verdict.

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