Former prosecutor in Edwards trial says informants were shopping for leniency

Tuesday, Nov. 14, 2000 | 10:22 a.m.

Steve Irwin said the tip that touched off the probe named Edwards and came to authorities at a 1996 gambling corruption seminar at the Grand Casino in Gulfport, Miss.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jim Letten, who led the successful prosecution of Edwards, testified last week that he did not know initially that Edwards was a target. Letten also said he was not aware of an immunity deal for brothers Michael Graham and Patrick Graham of Texas until after the fact.

Edwards was convicted in May, along with four others, of manipulating the riverboat casino licensing process.

At Monday's court-ordered deposition hearing, Irwin said an attorney for the Grahams approached him during a break at the Gulfport seminar, saying his clients had information about government corruption in Louisiana.

"He gave me the name of Edwin Edwards to make things happen," Irwin said.

Irwin said he then went to several high-ranking officials in the U.S. Attorney's Office in New Orleans, including Letten, and told them everything. Irwin said Letten, who would take over the case later, and Jim Mann, the head of the office's criminal investigation division, authorized him to cut a deal with the Grahams under which the brothers would not be prosecuted for crimes they admitted to in Louisiana.

Contacted through his New Orleans office, Letten said he stands by his testimony. He said he learned about Edwards and the deal "relatively shortly" after it was made.

The deal is under scrutiny because the Grahams' information allowed the FBI to get court authorization to wiretap the telephone of Edwards associate Cecil Brown, who also was convicted in the riverboat case. The investigation expanded to taps on Edwards' phones and bugs in his office that captured key conversations used by the prosecution.

The depositions in Texas were ordered by U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes, who is overseeing a corruption case against that state's former prison chief. A federal prosecutor in Texas suggested that the Grahams, who are witnesses in the case, might have been improperly granted immunity in Louisiana.

Irwin said he was removed from the Edwards case and replaced by Letten in 1997 after he and U.S. Attorney Eddie Jordan had "some extreme opposite viewpoints about how the investigation was going."

Irwin left in 1998 to open a private law practice in Mississippi.