DEA agent indicted for perjury and civil rights violations

A DEA agent is indicted for false statements that led to wrongful charges against 17 people:

A federal grand jury in Cleveland charged [Lee] Lucas, 41, of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, in an 18-count indictment that accuses him of perjury, making false statements and violating three people's civil rights.

The charges stem from a bungled drug sting in Mansfield that led to the arrests of 26 people in 2005. Lucas led a DEA task force that used informant Jerrell Bray to make undercover drug buys and help scoop up drug dealers. But Bray lied his way through the probe.

Seventeen people were wrongly charged, according to the indictment, as Bray intentionally misidentified people he bought drugs from and purposely staged scripted phone calls with friends, making the conversations sound as if he was setting up drug deals.

Of those 17 people, 12 were collectively sentenced to about 70 years in prison. Four were acquitted, and one spent nearly two years in jail awaiting trial.

Thirteen of the 15 drug buys Bray made were bogus, prosecutors said.

The indictment alleges that Lucas failed to supervise the informant, hid evidence from federal prosecutors and lied on the stand at two trials, amongst other things. Lucas plead not guilty. [HT: Tickle the Wire.]

In other DEA degenerate news, Gawker reports that a Seattle DEA agent has been busted for some really weird serial sockpuppetry on a website that debunks polygraph pseudoscience. In one especially odd exchange, the agent created one alter-ego that claimed to be a CIA agent and another called AnalSphincter and made them flirt.

Comments

[D. Potter]

Your headline "DEA agent inducted for perjury..." is misspelled, although I have no doubt there is a Perjury Hall of Fame somewhere.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Heh. Thanks, D.

[Dr. Psycho]

I'd love to see the Perjury Hall of Fame. It could serbve to honor the lesser lights of corruption who don't quite qualify to have their faces carved into Mount Flushmore alongside Nixon, Reagan and W.

[barbara gibbs]

We just went to court to sue Allstate, here in Tulare County, California, for refusing to settle our claim. Allstate brought in louis vargas, as their liar/witness. He was a non-licensed contractor who had worked on our house causing thousands of dollars of damage to us that after our fire Allsate's contractor found out to be not to code for one reason or another.Actually Allstate should have paid for it but they forced us to by saying it was only partially burned and they didn't cover the balance because it was not burned and it was not to code, but that is another story. Louis Vargas perjured himself by telling the jury we were not even living in our house when we had the fire, but living in our guest house and because Allstate Insurance had given us additional living expenses we lost our case the liars won, case closed. Allstate and their lawyers knew we were living in our house but they didn't care about the truth only winning. Allstate lawyers lied all through the trial saying we refused to take their buyout even though there never was one, His name is Greg McGregor and his office is in Woodland Hills, He told lie after lie. They searched so hard to find someone to lie for them that they spent $69,000 for costs, not including lawyers fees We were suing for less than that. They even deposed the doctor in Bakersfield who gave me a colonoscopy. They found a good liar in Louis Vargas and not only did we lose, but now Allstate is trying to get a judgement against us for $69,000. I am 68 years and my husband and I do not have the money and looks like we will lose everything, just for trying to get our claim paid. So much for jury trials. The lying lawyer could bring in a professional liar and the jury believed him. What a system. The liars always win and no one can do anything about it. No one will be prosecuted and we are destroyed.