Numerous, major drug conspiracy convictions were vacated in federal courts in Chicago in 1993 after it was found that prosecutors concealed from defense counsel "implicit and illicit" deals with witnesses who turned against their co-defendants in a series of trials collectively known as the "El Rukn cases." The government's informants had been given access to heroin, cocaine and marijuana by the prosecutors. They were also permitted to have sex with their girlfriends in the U.S. Attorney's office in the Kluczynski Federal Building, to indulge themselves with a pornographic video library and VCR, and to regularly make unsupervised long distance calls at taxpayer expense.

The witnesses were former high-ranking members of Chicago's El Rukn gang who plea-bargained big-time with prosecutors in exchange for their testimony -- and a whole lot more! During the two years the former gang members were cooperating (and supposedly "in custody" at the Chicago Metropolitan Correctional Center), agents of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and U.S. Attorney's Office staff readily provided them with cash, liquor, Sony Walkman devices, and private conjugal visits with female acquaintances during business hours. Things got so out of hand that the former gang members were answering the phones by saying "ATF" -- leading persons calling to believe they were talking to law enforcement officers when in fact they were speaking with convicted felons. A paralegal in the U.S. Attorney's Office (who was in fact an attorney and member of the Illinois Bar) routinely and illegally provided copies of secret grand jury testimony to El Rukn witnesses', and other prior testimony, which they were permitted to take back to the Correctional Center in the evenings to "assist" in their own "testimony."

Three federal judges ended up granting new trials to 11 defendants. Observed one judge, Marvin E. Aspen, "It is tragic that the United States of America has squandered millions of taxpayer dollars and years of difficult labor by the courts, prosecutors and law enforcement officers in the investigation and trial of these botched prosecutions."

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