IIPPI

The failure of U.S. agents to follow mandatory Department Of Justice (DOJ) protocol resulted in a 30-year federal sentence for a Bahamian Senior Radar Air Traffic Controller - with no prior convictions - in Florida on February 6, 1997.

Germany, (IIPPI) November 10, 2008 In 1995, Jesse Jerome Dean, Jr. was arrested in Miami, Florida on charges of being a member of the Luis Miguel Perez family-operated conspiracy to import illegal drugs into Florida.  

Dean refused a “plea-bargain” which proposed to dismiss all drug charges and to plead guilty to illegally using a telephone which carried a maximum of 48 months in prison.  

At trial in February of 1997, Dean testified that he was a paid, volunteer informant for the United States’ Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) who was doing his job of trying to infiltrate the Perez family drug organization, as he had previously done in other cases. 

Dean says he was amazed to learn for the first time that he had been “deactivated” in April of 1994 but not informed. It would have been mandated by DOJ Guidelines.  

Bahamas-based DEA Special Agent Shelton testified, “To my knowledge, he did not know that he had been deactivated.” Shelton had signed Dean’s deactivation.  

Dean was convicted because of Luis Miguel Perez’s testimony. Perez is a self-confessed, career drug-dealer and leader of the drug conspiracy. He was rewarded by the government with a 7-year reduction of his own 30-year sentence.  

Each witness at trial testified that Dean had absolutely nothing to do with the 908 kilograms of cocaine that were imported into Florida by the Perez organization.  

In 1998, the government was quoted by the court denying Dean’s direct appeal, “Although Dean had served as a drug enforcement agency informant in the Bahamas for a time, he had abandoned his functions when he elected to assist Miguel Perez in bringing cocaine into the United States.” 

In 2002, supressed information came to light. Dean had been previously cleared by a joint U.S./ Bahamian investigation. 

In spite of having shown to the trial judge newly discovered government documents which prove the known falsity of evidence used at trial, Dean remains imprisoned with a release date of 2021.  

Dean’s attorney is filing legal pleadings on November 12, 2008 before U.S. District Judge Daniel T.K. Hurley in the Southern District of Florida. On the same Wednesday, there is an all-day-long-vigil in front of the Federal Court House in Palm Beach, Florida, beginning at 9:00 A.M. Local contact for questions: fl_cjr@yahoo.com and (954) 483-1972. 

For more information go to www.iippi.org/inmates/florida/jessedean.html .