Well, John Stancil’s plea agreement was filed in court this morning, and it does not include a requirement to cooperate wth prosecutors and testify against his brother.
I was surprised, considering that the government agreed to dismiss 10 charges in order to obtain Stancil’s guilty plea on the single racketeering conspiracy charge.
I just don’t know what factors would be considered that would have justified the tradeoff.
In any case, here’s the copy of the plea agreement that was filed in court this morning.
Memorandum of Plea Agreement – U.S. v. John B. Stancil by Ian Lind on Scribd
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That’s unbelievable. He needs to be kept off the streets permanently!
One reason may be that the plea deal enables the government to focus on prosecuting Miske and saves the costs and time associated with prosecuting Stancil.
In my humble opinion, Stancil is getting off way too easy considering all the violent plots and attacks he was involved in. 20 year sentence with going on 4 years of time served come July 2024. This is very disheartening news! Lock him up for life, he shouldn’t be back on the streets again.
Stancil literally led the gunman to show him where the intended victim lived knowing the gunman’s intentions. I first thought the “Chemical Weapons” charge might have been a little dramatic for using pest control chemicals, but looking up Chloropicrin shows that it was a chemical used by the Germans in WWI as a poison gas against their enemies. Maybe the case against Miske was not as watertight as we thought without Stancil’s cooperation?
I do not like this deal but I agree with another commentator that it was probably about the cost and time prosecuting him when they want to concentrate resources on Miske. They better not let him off easily or I will lose all faith in the justice system in Hawaii. Not that I had much to begin with.
I don’t think the reason has anything to do with cost saving. The government has already spent millions of dollars on this case and the added cost to prosecute another defendant and co- conspirator is negligible. Rather I think that Stancil has valuable intelligence to offer as to what others can testify to, such as who killed Fraser and who was there that doesn’t require his testimony. He may also be a good source of intelligence of who is waiting in the wings to succeed his brother. And there is ALWAYS someone waiting to take over control, especially in a case that appears to involve vast corruption of public officials.
I believe you are giving too much credit for what passes as “organized crime” (OC) here. Why? Because NOTHING is well organized here, especially crime.
The one attempt to integrate with mainland OC was a failed dope deal, for which Miske allegedly fronted the cash ($400k) on the word of an associate that had hooked up with the Mexican Mafia, while incarcerated in CA. The transportation of the drugs was interdicted by police in CA.
There’s really no one void, such as narcotics transportation and distribution or extortion to fill, rather just a bunch of careless, sloppy crimes committed by a bunch of local thugs, with Miske as a common denominator.
The Miske case is all about fragmented cases that are tied together via strong circumstantial evidence.
Unfortunately, from my point of view at least, Stancil’s plea agreement does not require him to testify or cooperate with prosecutors by providing information to investigators.
Agreed. But what isn’t known is what was offered “off the record” in exchange for such an agreement that becomes public. Otherwise I quite agree that such an offer is at least odd.
Ian – You’re doing a really good job of reporting on the Miske case. It’s totally corrupt and not many people would have the nerve / the balls to dig into this corruption. I’ve been reading your stories on Civil Beat. Thank you so much for doing the work (research, etc.) so that everyday people can know about this kind of corrupt BS that is going on in Hawaii.