DeMassa Wants Drug Conspiracy Charges Dismissed

Twice-indicted attorney Philip A. DeMassa on Tuesday asked for a dismissal of the federal grand jury indictments against him on grounds of selective prosecution. He also called for removal of the U.S. attorney’s office from the case.

In papers filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court here, DeMassa charged that a second indictment by the federal grand jury resulted when he refused a government offer to plead guilty to a single felony count in return for dropping his civil suit against the government.

DeMassa was charged by U.S. Atty. Peter K. Nunez a year ago with playing a role in the “Coronado Company” drug smuggling ring and was indicted on three counts of mail fraud and harboring a fugitive.

DeMassa represented Louis Villar, a former high school Spanish teacher who was the ring’s mastermind. The charges against DeMassa stem from allegations made by Villar, who turned government informant (and thereby avoided a lengthy prison sentence).

DeMassa was indicted again in October on 20 counts of conspiracy to import drugs, conspiracy to possess drugs with intent to distribute, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and failure to file currency transaction reports. Before the indictments were handed down, 95 cartons of documents were seized from DeMassa’s home and office in April, 1983, by federal investigators and prosecutors.

The records seizure, which DeMassa and other attorneys say violated the client-lawyer relationship, prompted an $11-million civil lawsuit by DeMassa against Nunez and other federal officials.

According to affidavits filed Tuesday by Barry Tarlow, DeMassa’s Los Angeles attorney, and San Diego attorney Charles Sevilla, who acted as a mediator between DeMassa and Nunez’s office, federal prosecutors offered a plea bargain to DeMassa on May 30. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Herbert Hoffman and Peter Bowie are named in the affidavits as making the offer.

Hoffman denied in an affidavit that prosecutors had offered the plea bargain in exchange for DeMassa’s dismissal of the civil suit. Hoffman said there was a “brief discussion” of DeMassa’s civil suit at the May 30 meeting, but that it was Tarlow or Sevilla who asked “what effect would DeMassa’s willingness to dismiss the civil suit” have on the plea bargain.