Judge vacates accountant's conviction

OFF THE WIRE
By LEE ROOD • lrood@dmreg.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

A federal judge on Monday vacated a drug conviction against a former millionaire accountant from Waukee who was alleged to have been a kingpin in a motorcycle gang's multistate drug ring.

U.S. District Judge Robert Pratt said Russell Schoenauer's Omaha attorney, James Martin Davis, provided the 59-year-old ineffective assistance during his 2002 trial for an alleged methamphetamine and marijuana conspiracy. Contacted Monday, Davis defended his work on the case.

Schoenauer was one of nine people indicted in March 2001 in connection with alleged drug trafficking involving the Sons of Silence dating back to 1978.

Shoenauer had been sentenced to 17 years in prison on the drug charges. He is also serving a 10-year sentence on gun charges. He could be released from a South Dakota prison as soon as 2012 - unless prosecutors win an appeal of the judge's ruling.

Mike Bladel, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office, said prosecutors were reviewing Pratt's ruling to decide what to do next.

Federal agents watched Schoenauer for 10 years before his 2001 arrest, alleging in an indictment that he was the national treasurer for the Sons of Silence. The Harley-riding businessman, who acknowledged he had a drug problem but always insisted he was innocent, was accused of supplying club members with weapons and drugs, and teaching them how to hide their drug money.

Although the government subpoenaed volumes of Schoenauer's personal and business records, however, prosecutors provided little proof at his seven-week trial that the accountant used his many businesses to launder money for the Colorado-based biker club.

Schoenauer's new Kansas City attorney argued at a hearing in August that Davis failed to effectively represent Schoenauer in a number of areas.

Pratt, who oversaw the original 2002 trial, found Davis failed to look into records that could have better explained an alleged $2.6 million in unexplained income that made Schoenauer look guilty at the time.

"The Court ... finds ... that had Davis conducted the investigation into Schoenauer's records as requested by Schoenauer there is a reasonable probability the result in this case would have been different," Pratt wrote.

Davis said he asked for all exculpatory evidence in the case that would help Schoenauer, but prosecutors failed to disclose to him an independent 1992 IRS investigation that showed no unexplained income.

"The failure to disclose the evidence was egregious, but I didn't do it," Davis said. "The government was playing hide the ball."

Schoenauer's federal court case was the subject of a series of stories about the use of "snitches" in federal cases in The Des Moines Register in 2002.

Several convicts who faced long prison sentences were flown into Iowa to testify against Schoenauer and a co-defendant, Robert "Skunk" Norman, a Sons of Silence member, and were offered deals to testify. One of the convict witnesses was freed the same day as his testimony.

Federal prosecutors also paid Schoenauer's secretary to spy on him and agreed to restore the custody of a recovering meth addict's child if she testified.

At the time of the trial, Davis alleged federal drug agents were trying to prove a much larger conspiracy against Schoenauer so the government could recoup a windfall of money and property through forfeiture. At the height of his success, the accountant had $14 million in real estate and side businesses.

The case followed a sting in October 1999 in which 37 Sons of Silence members were arrested on drug and weapons charges.

original article