The Cornbread Mafia: A Homegrown Syndicate's Code of Silence and the Biggest Marijuana Bust in American History (42 page)

On December 14, the FBI office in Louisville sent an airtel message to the FBI's new director, William Sessions, who had been sworn in only a month before, to inform the director's office of the ongoing investigation into the Marion County "cartel."The agent in charge of the Louisville office wanted the director's office to know that a supervisor from DEA headquarters in Washington, D.C., was interfering with the task force's investigation, "visiting all the states where the arrests have taken place. Since then the flow of information from the arresting agencies ... has ceased."

The next day an FBI supervisor spoke with a DEA supervisor in Washington, who "assured him that no CCE investigation would be conducted outside the present task force investigation."

A month later, on January 11, 1988, the Louisville-based task force met in Minneapolis with representatives from Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska and Wisconsin-each of which had "ongoing investigations" related to "the cultivation, processing and distribution of marijuana by residents of Marion County, Ky."By then, thirty-two people had been arrested with eighty tons of marijuana valued at $144 million. Subsequent to that meeting, the US attorney for the Western District of Kentucky, Joseph Whittle, "confirmed that a CCE prosecution" would be "attempted in Louisville" and not from DEA headquarters.

However, the task force soon encountered the same roadblocks that other law enforcement agencies had discovered: the "politely uncooperative" nature of the Kentucky outlaws. "This is a very close-knit group," according to an FBI memo from September 1988, "and is virtually impossible to penetrate with conventional investigative techniques." Unlike the way the DEA could handle other drug hotspots in metropolitan areas, the DEA couldn't send an undercover agent or informant into Marion County because "all strangers are suspected to be policemen." Traditional stakeouts and other eyes-on surveillance were considered to be "fruitless due to the wariness of the subjects."

For two weeks in 1988, leading up to Johnny Boone's scheduled trial date, Jack Smith did nothing else but prepare for Boone's defense in St. Paul. He knew that two of the charges facing Johnny Boone carried life sentences. With the help of an associate, he prepared jury instructions and voir-dire questions and created folders for all the witnesses the government intended to call. Smith also called Boone's wife several times. The day before the trial was to start, Smith returned to the evidence room and reexamined some things after talking with Boone. Despite their hustle, the case never came before a jury.

Although Smith and Boone fully anticipated taking the case to trial, the government threw them a curveball when the assistant US attorney told them that the last three remaining defendants in the Minnesota case must collectively agree to a "package deal" plea bargain. If any of them decided to take their chances at trial, then they all would have to go. Each, therefore, was responsible for the fate of the others.

If Boone accepted the plea deal, he would be sentenced to twenty years. So, at the last moment the day before he was to go to trial, faced with carrying the fates of two others if he decided to fight and staring at the possibility of life in prison if he lost, Boone waived his constitutional right to trial by jury and accepted a twenty-year sentence-two consecutive tenyear terms. After his bust in the Belize deal, Boone had managed to get immunity for anything he may have done prior to that time, but when he tried to get a similar deal from the prosecutor in St. Paul, he had no luck.

The only saving grace for Johnny Boone and his crew had been that his arrest had come in the last week of October, not the first week of November. Because he was busted before the November 1 start date for the 1984 anticrime law's mandatory sentencing guidelines, Johnny Boone would have to serve only 66.6 percent of his time.

"I'll be in until the year 2000," Boone thought. "But at least I won't be in until 2005 or for life. In 2000, I'll be fifty-seven years old." At the time, he was forty-four.

On April 29,1988, the last of Boone's Kentucky crew-the ones who hadn't already been sentenced to six months' jail time and three years' probation-met their sentencing fate, beginning at 10:30 a.m.

"Now, we'll turn to ... Mr. Berry?" the judge said, referring to Les Berry, the driver of the getaway car.

"Yes sir," replied Les Berry. "I'd just like to state that I fully regret my actions in this matter here."

"Earl?" the judge asked, referring to Earl Gray, Berry's attorney.

"Good morning, Your Honor . . . I'll be brief," Gray said. "But I would like to point out that Mr. Berry stands among the farmhands here who had been there for a week or so, yet he's thirty-six years old. In the thirty-six years that he has lived, this is the first time ever that he's even been arrested. He's a Marine, honorable discharge, and he spent six years in the Guards.

"The only explanation that he makes, and he realizes it was wrong when he did it, was that he had grown up in a split family, he had been raised by his aunt and uncle, and because of the dire economic problems where he lived, there was no money, and he was afraid that he would lose his wife and three children. He made the only mistake he's made so far in his life, Your Honor. There's no-nothing in the presentencing investigation that shows that this man's ever been involved in anything like this before. And he spent 120 days in lockup at Stillwater.

"He's got three children; two, he's adopted, and one of his own. It just seems to me, Your Honor, that a man thirty-six years old should be entitled to some consideration based on his past record, and I'd ask the court to sentence Mr. Berry to a split sentence, to give him some time in jail, but to put him on probation and credit the 120 days he served at hard time in the Stillwater prison.

"If the court feels that this is not an appropriate sentence and decides to send him to prison, we would request voluntary surrender, Your Honor. But he's got a job now. He's got his family back together.

"Frankly, I read his [presentencing report], and I've talked with Les for a long time here, and in my years of experience of representing defendants in federal court, he's the best one I've ever represented. And I think that says something for him. I've represented a lot of people, Your Honor. He's a good guy. There's no question about it. I mean, you know, basically a heck of a good guy."

The judge then turned to the lawyer for the second member of the plea bargain, who asked the judge to give his client a reduced sentence and requested voluntary surrender. Finally, the judge turned to Johnny Boone's attorney, Jack Nordby. (When Boone reluctantly accepted his package-deal plea bargain, his Kentucky attorney, Jack Smith, advised his client that local attorneys who knew the judge, such as Jack Nordby, would be better suited to represent him in his sentencing hearing.)

"OK," the judge said. "Jack?"

"Your Honor . . ." Nordby said, "I think there's something obscene in even considering putting someone in jail for ten or twenty years for manufacturing a product which I believe is going to be sold across the counter by the drug companies shortly. That doesn't mean it's legal, but there's something gravely disproportionate in taking these gigantic amounts of time out of people's lives, any amount of time out of a young person's life, especially in days when we have what I believe to have been a very serious Supreme Court nominee who's used this substance. It's a violation of law, and Mr. Boone, as compared to these other folks, doesn't look very good. But there's still something obscene about saying that even a man with a long prior record should do that kind of time for this offense....

"The obscenity I refer to, of course, has nothing to do with this court. It's the Congress who enacted this law. There are people who should be in jail forever and for long terms, but not people who are manufacturing, selling marijuana.

"I'd ask Your Honor to sentence Mr. Boone to a period of five years in prison ... lodged in Lexington, Kentucky, which is nearest his home.

"Thank you, Your Honor."

"Mr. Boone," the judge said. "Do you want to say something?

"Yes, I would, Your Honor," Johnny Boone said. "Your Honor, what we did was wrong, it caused many, many problems for all of our families. We don't deny that we broke the law.

"I ask the court-I've had a lot of time, I've been over six months now in jail, and I've sat and done a lot of thinkin'. On this as a group of people, I ask the court when you sentence these people-we're from a poor place, and what we did, we-I don't think anybody here is into any kind of thievery. There are many hard drugs that are being sold in the United States now. In the area we're from, you know, things like cocaine and-we just-you know, we look on them as very bad and bad for all of America. I offer no excuse. I only say that because of the property in our area, marijuana is one of the things that sometimes helps put bread on the table for people....

"We're not criminals, Your Honor. We're not-we're not the kind of people that go out and harm people. The only thing we try to do is-I know myself and several people here even feed families that are not their own. They feed little children that don't have breadwinners at home, back home where we come from. This is somethin'we do....

"I don't understand this law, either; how people that are not into personally harmin'other people and are into workin'with their hands on the earth that God gave us, I don't understand the law takin' us for the long periods of time that it dictates it's going to. If we were physically harmin' people, or I read in the newspapers of people that actually take people's lives or bodily harm them, they don't get the kind of terms that we're facin' here. I guess I really don't understand how it can be done to a group of people like this. This group of people here are really good people. And you don't personally know them, but they stand out back home as hard-workin', honest people. Nobody here causes anybody any trouble back home.

"And I personally am very sorry for what has happened. It has caused many problems for the families, much grief, and I hope that the court looks with mercy on this group of people. We didn't intend any harm to anyone.

"Thank you," the judge said.

Despite Boone's eloquent speech, the court sentenced him to twenty years in federal prison and the two others in the package-deal plea bargain to ten years each, stiff sentences compared with the six months in prison and three years of probation that the rest of Boone's Minnesota crew received.

By the close of 1988, seventy federal prosecutions against Kentucky marijuana growers from in and around Marion County had resulted in fifty-six convictions. At the time, there were still many cases yet to be concluded: eight charged in the Western District of Kentucky; fourteen charged in Kansas; five in Illinois and one in Missouri. Of these twentyeight cases in progress, twenty-six were Kentuckians, with twenty-two from Marion County.

With the task force working overtime to centralize intelligence on the Cornbread Mafia, federal law enforcement and prosecutors had a good understanding of exactly what Marion County had been up to for the past few years; the FBI had been keeping a list:

A. On August 23,1985, Michigan State Police seiz[ed] 31,747 plants.... The prior year a couple lived on the farm, both from Marion County, Kentucky.

B. On November 6, 1986, approximately 4,600 pounds of marijuana were seized in Woodford County, Kentucky.... Twelve were arrested, all of whom dressed in camouflage fatigues, and all but one were from Marion County, Kentucky.

C. On August 20,1987... Indiana State Police ... 27,000 marijuana plants. Two were arrested from ... Marion County, Kentucky.

D. On October 9, 1987, the Michigan State Police ... 20,000 marijuana plants.... All three were from Marion County, Kentucky.

E. On October 12, 1987, Indiana State Police discovered 28,000 marijuana plants ... Marion County, Kentucky ... Documentary evidence discovered provided leads to a farm in Paris, Missouri.

F. On October 23, 1987, information provided to the Minnesota State Bureau of Crime Prevention led DEA task force officers to a farm ... where they seized 96,000 pounds of marijuana and arrested 17 individuals ... from Marion County, Kentucky.