Crime plotting may be beyond scope of policy

Deborah Gilg, the U.S. attorney for Nebraska, declined to explain authorities’ decision to use an attorney to glean information from alleged marijuana kingpin Shannon E. Williams.

But as several defense attorneys questioned the practice, Gilg said she was confident investigators are on solid legal ground in using the attorney.

Creighton University law professor R. Collin Mangrum, an expert on Nebraska rules of evidence, agreed.

Attorney-client privilege applies to anything a client divulges about his past, Mangrum said. Federal and state court rulings have established that such privileges do not extend to plots to commit crimes.

A 1980 precedent put it this way: “Attorney-client communications lose their privileged character when the lawyer is consulted not with respect to past wrongdoings but rather to further a continuing or contemplated criminal fraud or scheme.”

Still, several defense attorneys questioned the propriety of the government’s use of an attorney.

Williams’ new attorney, Michael Tasset, called the investigation “irregular” and vowed to challenge the admissibility of evidence against his client.

Omaha attorney D.C. “Woody” Bradford said he had “never seen anything like this” in his 42 years of practice. Bradford said the case is an extension of the aggression that authorities use in the war on drugs — a war that he said increasingly infringes on civil liberties.

More than attorney-client privilege, Mangrum said, is the issue of whether the attorney was used to entrap Williams into committing a crime he wouldn’t have otherwise committed.

“Just because there’s an attorney and a client doesn’t mean that everything that goes on between them is protected,” Mangrum said. “If a criminal tells an attorney ‘I want you to help me commit a crime,’ that’s not protected.”

Contact the writer:

444-1275, todd.cooper@owh.com

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