Olympic Case Is Dismissed

A federal judge in Utah on Thursday threw out all remaining charges in the criminal case against the two leaders of Salt Lake City’s scandal-tainted bid for the 2002 Winter Olympics, declaring that the case was fatally flawed.

“I am not surprised by this outcome,” the current head of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, Mitt Romney, said upon hearing that the case against Tom Welch, who headed the bid, and Dave Johnson, Welch’s chief lieutenant, had been dismissed.

“This,” Romney said, “is what our lawyers told us $4 million ago,” a reference to the costs and legal fees associated with the case--an estimate that may well be low. A thorough accounting has never been made public.

In a 26-page opinion, U.S. District Judge David Sam dismissed 10 fraud counts and a conspiracy charge that federal prosecutors had filed in July, 2000, against Welch and Johnson. This past July, the judge had dismissed four counts of interstate travel in aid of racketeering. All 15 counts were charged as felonies.

After the dismissal of four charges, prosecutors had elected to pursue the remaining 11, fraud and conspiracy, but the judge said that without the racketeering counts they lacked legal merit.

Through a complex bit of legal maneuvering, the federal racketeering charges had relied on the use of a Utah state bribery misdemeanor charge--a turn that many legal experts felt from the outset was a reach.

State authorities had declined to prosecute.

“There really is no federal interest in making sure the Olympic bid process is clean,” Johnson’s attorney, Max Wheeler, said Thursday.

The surprise Thursday was not so much that the case was dismissed--after the dismissal of the four bribery counts, it was plain that the rest of the case was wobbly--but the timing of the move.

Like most federal judges, Sam was under no pressing time deadline.

Nonetheless, he acted aggressively and decisively in clearing the case.

Thus the prospect of a trial--and the recurring story line of the scandal--will not occupy center stage during the Games, which open Feb. 8.

Salt Lake City won the Games in 1995 after wooing IOC members and their relatives with more than $1 million in cash, gifts and other inducements.

In response, 10 IOC members were expelled or resigned and the IOC enacted a 50-point reform plan.

“When people think of Salt Lake City now, they can focus on the athletes and their test with history,” Anita DeFrantz, the senior U.S. member of the IOC, said.

The IOC itself has been careful to show deference to the U.S. judicial process in public remarks about the case, and Director General Francois Carrard said in a statement issued Thursday from the IOC’s base in Lausanne, Switzerland: “This was a matter for the U.S. courts to decide and of course the IOC respects the decision.”

For the defense, of course, the ruling brought a measure of relief. Neither Welch nor Johnson was available for comment but, as Welch’s chief defense attorney, Bill Taylor, put it, “I’m so glad the judge did it before the Games, just to wrap it up. If the government appeals, so be it.”

Prosecutors could appeal, to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, though that process could take months if not years.

The government spent 19 months of intense investigation before filing an indictment; federal prosecutors are known in high-profile matters to bring only those cases that top U.S. Dept. of Justice officials feel confident of winning.

A spokeswoman said Thursday in a statement issued in Washington that department is “considering our options.”