Federal cases decline on national level, remain stable here

~ An assistant prosecutor said the number of area cases likely would have risen had he not gone to Iraq this year.

Despite national numbers indicating a decrease in some areas of federal prosecutions, the caseload for the local U.S. attorney's office has remained about the same.

Three out of four categories nationwide showed at least a 9 percent decrease in prosecutions when compared to last year, according to numbers from Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data-gathering, research and distribution organization associated with Syracuse University.

The only category that increased nationally, immigration, did so by 4.8 percent. The others, narcotics, weapons and white-collar crime, saw a decrease of 12.1, 12 and 9 percent, respectively, in May from the same period in 2005.

For the Southern Division of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Missouri, which covers Perry County down to the Bootheel and west to Shannon County, filings of criminal cases have remained about the same, assistant federal prosecutor Larry Ferrell said.

"We're just not seeing a substantial change in the percent of our cases," he said.

So far this year, 134 cases have been filed, Ferrell said. In the same period in 2005, 130 cases were filed. For the St. Louis region of the Eastern District, encompassing Ste. Genevieve County north to the Iowa border, 540 cases were filed by this time in 2005 and 552 have been filed so far this year.

The number of cases this year likely would have been higher had he not been absent for the majority of the year, Ferrell said. He left at the beginning of the year to spend seven months in Iraq as a prosecutor.

"That kept it about the same level," he said.

Nationally, drug prosecutions have dropped 21.9 percent from the same period five years ago, according to the clearinghouse report.

White-collar crime, which includes bank and wire fraud, has also seen a slip nationwide. From five years ago, the number of prosecutions has fallen 28.4 percent.

Although weapon prosecutions saw a dip from a year ago, there was a 38.5 percent increase from five years ago, the report stated.

While Ferrell said he could not comment on the national figures, he attributed the stability of the local numbers to law enforcement and his office's dedication to drug and gun crimes.

The rise in immigration prosecutions may be linked to a recent focus of ensuring illegal aliens are not working in sensitive areas of national security.

"There has been a certain crackdown," U.S. Department of Justice spokesman Bryan Sierra said. In response to the threat of terrorism, Sierra said, the department launched Operation Tarmac to ensure illegal aliens were not working at airports.

Sierra could not comment on the data showing a declining trend in drug and white-collar prosecutions, adding that the department does not use statistics to gauge the priority of cases.

Locally, the number of cases presented to the U.S. attorney's office from the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has also remained constant.

"Fifty percent of our work force this last year were totally dedicated to drug and gun cases," Ferrell said.

Two of the five assistant U.S. attorneys in the Cape Girardeau office work primarily on either drug or weapons-related cases, according to Ferrell.

As a result, 64 of the 87 indictments filed so far this year were for drug and gun cases, and 50 percent of the drug cases were methamphetamine-related, he said.

Missouri's Eastern District ranked ninth nationally for weapons prosecutions per capita, according to the clearinghouse data.

kmorrison@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 127

GRAPH:

U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of Missouri, Southern Division

* Cases filed year to date 2005: 130

* Cases filed year to date 2006: 134

Source: U.S. Attorney's office