ARTICLE - JUDGE - DRUG LORD'S SENTENCE

JUDGE DELAYS DECISION ON CUTTING HAITIAN DRUG LORD'S PRISON SENTENCE
(Miami Herald) - By Jay Weaver

A federal judge delayed cutting a Haitian cocaine kingpin’s 27-year sentence by as much as half, saying he wanted more answers about the convict’s Port-au-Prince mansion and art collection — including a Monet painting.

A federal prosecutor Tuesday recommended cutting one-time Haitian drug lord Jacques Ketant’s 27-year prison sentence by half, citing his “invaluable information” that helped authorities convict a dozen fellow traffickers, politicians and police officers from Haiti.

But U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno delayed his decision, saying he wants more details about the government’s attempt to recover $15 million in drug profits from Ketant, who was convicted in 2003 of smuggling 30 tons of cocaine into South Florida and New York.

Moreno also inquired about the status of Ketant’s Port-au-Prince mansion as well as an art collection of more than 200 paintings that boasted a Monet.

“It should be worth at least a million dollars,” Moreno said of the painting by the French Impressionist painter. “You don’t know where the Monet is?”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Lynn Kirkpatrick said the U.S. government already seized the Monet, was able to recover only a small portion of the drug profits, and that Ketant’s mansion was turned over to the Haitian government.

Ketant’s attorney, Ruben Oliva, said: “He's got nothing left.”

But the judge really caught the prosecutor and defense attorney by surprise when he disclosed that he had recently received a letter from a man who said Ketant was responsible for the alleged 1997 killing of his mother in South Florida, according to Moreno, who did not disclose names nor file the letter in the court record.

In court, Kirkpatrick said she was unfamiliar with the murder allegation and Oliva said it was unfounded.

The judge ordered both sides to address his questions within two weeks before he holds another hearing on the proposed sentence reduction for Ketant, who is imprisoned in Arkansas.

Ketant, 48, had lived as a virtually untouchable kingpin in his hilltop mansion overlooking Port-au-Prince. In 2003, Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide expelled him under U.S. pressure because Ketant’s bodyguards beat up an official at a private school attended by children of U.S. Embassy personnel.

That extraordinary move by Aristide allowed federal authorities to put Ketant on a plane for Miami and charge him with conspiring to ship loads of Colombian cocaine through Haiti by paying off island officials and police officers.

“When he arrived in the United States, [Haiti] was probably the first true narco-state,” said Oliva, who urged the judge to cut Ketant’s sentence by more than half. “He was cooperating not only against fellow drug traffickers but also government officials.”

Ketant, who pleaded guilty soon after his expulsion, grabbed center stage in the government’s drug-trafficking investigation in the days leading up to Aristide’s sudden departure as president in February 2004.

At his sentencing that month in Miami federal court, the flamboyant Ketant made a stunning allegation: He said he could not have directed his cocaine-smuggling network without paying millions in bribes to his friend Aristide. Ketant accused the president of turning Haiti into a “narco-country.”

Aristide’s attorney, Ira Kurzban, has repeatedly denied the allegations.

The feds focused for years on Ketant’s allegation of paying off Aristide, but agents struggled to uncover any evidence such as financial records to prove it, according to law enforcement sources familiar with the case.

Last year, Aristide emerged from exile in South Africa and returned to Haiti.

But Ketant’s inside information helped the feds gain momentum to prosecute about 50 defendants from Haiti — including Aristide’s security chief at the presidential palace.