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Imprisoned airplane broker Reagan released on appeal By Chris Bristol A federal appeals court has overturned the convictions of a former aviation broker from Medford, even though he already has served most of his sentence for allegedly scamming more than two dozen surplus military aircraft from the government. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Roy Reagan�s conviction on technical grounds, ruling 2-1 that parts of the government�s case exceeded the statute of limitations. The ruling also applied to Reagan�s co-defendant, retired Forest Service assistant aviation director Fred Fuchs. But Fuchs already served his two-year sentence on a conspiracy charge, and Reagan served 20 months of a 30-month sentence before the appeals court ordered his immediate release from prison in February pending the outcome of his appeal. Reagan�s appeal attorney, Marcia Shein of Atlanta, blasted the government for imprisoning her client before the case ran its course. She argued that it was almost unprecedented at the federal level for someone convicted of a non-violent crime to go to prison before the appeal could be heard. "They should have let him out on bond," Shein said. "Now you see why." The ruling was just the latest twist in a complicated case in which the defendants claimed they were political scapegoats over a bureaucratic misunderstanding. The case dated back to 1989, when the Forest Service handed over 28 planes � 22 Air Force C130A transports and six Navy P-3A anti-submarine attack planes � to five private firefighting contractors as part of a program that permitted the government to swap historic aircraft for planes of similar historic value. The planes were supposed to be used to fight forest fires. The exchange program came under scrutiny in 1991 when two of the planes turned up hauling cargo in Kuwait at the tail end of the Gulf War. An audit concluded the aging C-119s the government got in trade from the contractors were worthless junk, not "historic," and that the newer planes the contractors got from the Forest Service were not being used to fight forest fires. The Forest Service valued the C-130As at $15,000 each � their value as scrap metal. Government auditors said each was worth an average of $2.4 million. Reagan, a graduate of Eagle Point High School and former Air Force tanker pilot, once worked for two of the contractors. He also worked briefly for Central Point-based Erickson Air-Crane, which disavowed any role in the case and was never accused of any wrongdoing. The government eventually brought charges, and in 1997, after a five-week trial, a federal jury in Arizona convicted Reagan and Fuchs of conspiring to steal the planes. Federal prosecutors argued the case was more than merely bad horse-trading. They said Reagan made more than $1 million reselling some of the planes, many of which were scavenged for parts or lost in complicated transfers of titles. One of the contractors even leased aircraft to a Central American airline that prosecutors identified as a front for Colombian drug traffickers. A Congressman said some of the planes were also used to fly covert missions for the CIA. But the defendants claimed problems with the exchange program stemmed from bureaucratic misunderstandings, not misfeasance. None of the contractors or their business partners were ever prosecuted. "I don�t know how they could blame these two guys when there was a whole group of bureaucrats higher up in the food chain who had to approve these contracts," Shein said Tuesday. In its ruling, the appeals court reversed the convictions on the grounds that some of the allegations predated the five-year statute of limitations. The court threw out the verdicts because it is impossible to know which aspects of the case the jury found most compelling. Obituaries | Sports | Business | Classifieds | Tempo | Prime Times | So Oregon Sites | Outdoor Journal | Subscribe | Contact | Movies | Advertise | Real Estate Showcase | Archive | Editorials | Letters to the editor | Religion | Wake-up Call | NIE | Cyber Chef | Job Network | So Oregon Weather | WSJ Northwest | Forums | AP Wire | AP Money | F.A.Q. | Awards Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. The Community Newspaper Subsidiary of Dow Jones & Co, Inc Copyright �The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA