I want to answer a question that I’ve been asked by an inmate who is extradition and who wants to know what the future holds for him in the United States. I want to write this article in a way that everyone similarly situated will find useful.
The question asked is, “what do the prosecutors want to know assuming I want to cooperate?” The short answer is “everything.” First of all, the agents are trying to get a feel for a defendant’s trustworthiness and so all the questions they ask you they know the answers to. There was recently an ex member of the Trump administration who was questioned by the special prosecutor and emerged saying, “while the prosecutor was courteous, professional, and totally prepared,” it was if a proctologist had just examined him. “They knew more about me and what I had done than I did.”
And through the years the government has refined their interrogation technique. They have concluded, for example, that they should not tell defendants what or whom they are interested in because defendants may shape their testimony focusing only on the person or the incident that the agents seem interested in while conveniently omitting others. As a result they don’t tell the defendant anything. They just ask questions that the defendant has to answer completely or risk losing the opportunity to cooperate and drastically reduce his sentence. It is why informants usually tell the truth, even if most non-cooperating defendants do not think so. It’s because their liberty and thus their lives depends on it. And agents will not tell you that they know you are lying. They’ll simply give you enough rope to hang yourself, and then they will tell your lawyer that they are not interested in your cooperation. To you they will simply say that, “it was nice to meet you.” People are doing 35 years rather than 5 because they didn’t take that instruction to heart.
I should also tell you that the government rejects partial cooperation. So if you think that you can incriminate A but not B, think again. Everybody’s fair game: workers, sources of supply, partners, customers, even drivers and family. These people have to be identified and their activities described. There’s no such thing as being a partial cooperator. Either you are or you’re not a cooperator. And you have to admit your own guilt. There is no salvation without confession. I know there are those at La Picota (prison) who will still rationalize. They will convince themselves that it won’t be “they” cooperating but someone they are paying to do the cooperating. But it’s not long before they realize, that it is theythat have to cooperate. There’s no way of getting around it.
And if violence is involved in one’s history, there will be a “violence proffer” zeroing in on all the violence one has committed, facilitated, contracted for or witnessed, naming names, dates, victims and circumstances. But if it is any comfort, these agents have heard it all before and while it may affect your sentence somewhat, surprisingly enough it doesn’t affect it as much as you might think. I can think of a few people whose body count was in triple figures, and they are living quite comfortably in Palm Beach Florida. It’s all about the qualityand quantityof the cooperation.
“Cooperation is a business. You give they give. And they keep their word because, well, it would be bad for ‘business’.”
You should also know that in New York and in most federal districts the government does not recommend specific sentences. They simply tell the judge in a letter known as the “5K letter” the extent of your cooperation and let the judge consider your efforts in determining sentence.
But if the government finds out that you are covering up for anyone, withholding information, or just plain lying, it will reject your cooperation not because they are personally offended but because you have lost your value as a witness. At a trial, the government hasto tell the defense lawyer that you have laid and those defense lawyers will tell the jury that you’re a liar because you have lied!
Cooperating badly can be catastrophic. People who do not cooperate truthfully and are denied the opportunity to cooperate are looking at four or five times– not just two or three times– the amount of prison time they would ordinarily have gotten if they had cooperated satisfactorily.
I’m not urging anyone to cooperate because only God can make a cooperator, but I’m warning all defendants that cooperating is serious business with serious consequences. Do it right or don’t do it. Defendants don’t know gangsters like a pissed-off Uncle Sam that feels disrespected.
David Zapp & Johanna Zapp