The wheels of justice grind slowly. Just ask a reptile dealer named Beau Lee Lewis and the prosecutors who have been trying for most of his adult life to convict him of smuggling.
Lewis was an 18-year-old running a wildlife import-export business from his home in Buckeye, Ariz., in 1995 when he answered an ad in "Reptiles" magazine seeking buyers for animals from abroad. Prosecutors say the ad was actually placed by a government agent who was cooking up a plan to lure Anson Wong, a Malaysian reptile dealer, to the United States to face smuggling charges.
Lewis' purchases were legal at first, but prosecutors said he eventually asked the agent about importing some rare lizards and other reptiles protected by federal law. Soon, according to prosecutors, Lewis was buying reptiles illegally from Wong, under the agent's watchful eye. He was indicted in 1998 on charges of smuggling 125 reptiles -- lizards, tortoises, pythons, and a crocodile-like creature called a false gavial -- many of which died in transit, prosecutors said.
Wong, meanwhile, was coaxed into meeting with the agent in Mexico, spent two years fighting extradition to the United States, then pleaded guilty, was sentenced to six years in prison, and cooperated in the prosecution of Lewis.
Tried along with other smuggling defendants in Oakland, where the reptiles were brought into the country, Lewis was convicted of 17 felony charges in 2001 and sentenced to three years in prison. But the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2003 that the government had violated his right to a speedy trial by delaying the proceedings for nearly four months to arrange testimony by the original government agent.
The court didn't decide, however, whether the violation was so serious that the charges should be dismissed permanently. A federal judge allowed a new indictment, and Lewis was convicted again in 2005, this time on six felonies, and sentenced to 23 months in prison. Then in 2008, the appeals court said the judge, who by then had left the federal bench, had used the wrong standard in evaluating Lewis' right to a speedy trial, and referred the issue to a new judge. The case then wound its way back to the appeals court, which finally ruled on Tuesday that the second trial in 2005 was legal because the charges were serious, the government had acted in good faith, and the four-month delay didn't significantly harm Lewis.
Lewis' appeals aren't over, however, and he still hasn't spent a day in prison. Still awaiting argument before another panel of the appeals court is a claim that the original judge gave faulty instructions to the jury on the core of Lewis' defense -- that the agent entrapped him into smuggling reptiles.
Anson Wong, meanwhile, has finished his prison sentence and returned to Malaysia. According to a National Geographic magazine article in January, he's running a zoo where he plans to keep tigers.
Read more: www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/crime/detail?&entry_id=68334#ixzz0uMAw8MJO
