SAN DIEGO — A judge delayed sentencing of celebrated Los Angeles drug dealer "Freeway" Ricky Ross on Friday to give his attorney a chance to prove his contention that overzealous federal authorities improperly used a drug dealer to entrap Ross.
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles City Council--pressured by a group of black political activists--asked U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno to investigate published allegations that the explosion of crack in Los Angeles during the 1980s was exacerbated by covert U.S. government support of Latin American drug smuggling.
Ross' attorney, Alan Fenster, wants to question two inmates at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in San Diego about their knowledge of convicted drug dealer Oscar Danilo Blandon. Blandon was the key witness against Ross, the onetime kingpin of the crack cocaine market in Los Angeles.
Fenster asserts that inmates will provide evidence that Blandon, despite his assurances to the government, is still dealing drugs while working as an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration. Ross hopes such testimony will convince U.S. District Judge Marilyn Huff that he deserves a new trial because of prosecutorial misconduct.
Huff, while expressing some skepticism about the truthfulness of one of the inmates, a convicted perjurer, scheduled a hearing for Sept. 13 so they can be questioned by Fenster and prosecutors. Because of his two previous felony drug convictions, Ross could be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Fenster says Blandon, a drug partner of Ross in the 1980s before both men were sent to prison, pressured Ross to return to distributing crack cocaine in South-Central Los Angeles and elsewhere.
Testimony at Ross' trial, which ended in a conviction, indicated that Blandon, a member of a wealthy Nicaraguan family, was released early from prison after promising to help authorities arrest and convict other drug dealers, particularly Ross.
Blandon testified that he began smuggling large amounts of cocaine to Ross in the 1980s so he could funnel profits to the Contra rebels in his native Nicaragua. The Contras were mobilized and funded by the Central Intelligence Agency in an effort to topple the country's leftist regime.
Fenster told reporters that "Ricky Ross was the victim of the U.S. government." But Assistant U.S. Atty. L.J. O'Neale, who prosecuted Ross, told Huff that Ross' comments on secretly tape-recorded meetings with Blandon and an undercover drug agent portray someone who was eager to get back into the lucrative drug trade.
