Omaha attorney Terry Haddock says he knew he risked losing everything by becoming an informant in a federal drug ring investigation.
He would put his family in jeopardy. Mistakes in his legal career, his dimming financial picture and medical problems would be exposed, he said.
He expected defense lawyers to call him a liar and seek to discredit him.
All because Haddock, 52, would record his talks with Shannon Williams, a gang member and convicted crack dealer who once was acquitted of a murder charge.
“I had a personal struggle with myself whether to get involved in that,” Haddock told a federal judge Thursday after emerging from eight months in seclusion.
“But I could not live with the fact that this man would be walking the streets. I had to do it.”
For more than six months in 2009, the white-haired attorney strapped a government-issued listening device to his body and secretly recorded 63 jailhouse conversations with Williams.
Those recordings from the Douglas County Jail are a cornerstone of the federal case against Williams, 42, who is charged with money laundering and conspiring to distribute more than 1,000 kilograms of marijuana. If convicted of both charges, he faces a maximum of life in prison.
However, Williams' attorneys say the use of Haddock as an informant was misconduct by the government.
They say the recordings — on which Williams can be heard plotting with Haddock to move millions of dollars worth of marijuana — were privileged communications because Williams believed Haddock was working as his lawyer.
Williams' lead attorney, Robert Creager, maintains that the government knew Haddock was Williams' lawyer but used him as an informant anyway.
“This is a case where it appears Mr. Haddock had an agenda,” Creager said.
At issue during three days of U.S. District Court hearings this week was whether the information Haddock risked everything to obtain can be used in Williams' trial.
Creager said the 100-plus hours of recordings Haddock made at the Douglas County Jail should not be allowed as evidence. He's also challenging a recording made by an inmate whom investigators placed in Williams' cell.
Testifying before U.S. Magistrate Judge F.A. Gossett III, Haddock and a police detective described how Haddock opened a dummy corporation with the government's knowledge and used it to launder $100,000 of drug proceeds.
They told how, with three lawmen following him, Haddock took $50,000 in cash to Arizona for a planned drug buy that eventually fell through.
The government has paid Haddock about $47,000 for his time and the costs of relocating him.
But federal prosecutors maintain that at the outset, Haddock volunteered to serve as an informant.
The decision to pay him didn't come until months after he started recording conversations, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Maria Moran.
Prosecutors also insist that Haddock never served as Williams' attorney. Haddock can be heard on some recordings telling Williams that he wouldn't represent him.
Williams did pay Haddock — to visit him in jail so he could continue his criminal enterprise while behind bars, prosecutors said.
“It was the defense (Williams) that exploited Terry Haddock's status as a lawyer,” Moran said. “The defendant knew more about the criminal justice system than Mr. Haddock ever did.”
The judge did not rule Thursday. The hearing will continue in September.
Contact the writer:
444-1068, johnny.perez@owh.com
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