Cocaine Cowboys: The Kings of Miami (2021) s01e03 Episode Script

[distant sirens]
[reporter] Willy Falcon
and Salvador Magluta were arrested
and charged with smuggling nearly 75 tons
of cocaine into South Florida.
The Feds seized nearly
2.1 billion dollars' worth of property
as they prepare their case
against the Falcon group.
But then witnesses against the gang
started dropping like a judge's gavel.
[Grieg's
"In the Hall of the Mountain King" plays]
[Jim] Falcon-Magluta organization
was never known as a violent organization.
It wasn't characteristic of their method
of operation to retaliate or injure
or kill persons they had done
business with or sought to suppress.
The stakes changed
when they were arrested.
The government was seeking witnesses
to provide information to the grand jury
and help support
the indictment in this case.
And Tony Posada
was one of those witnesses.
I was not working
in the cocaine business anymore.
[music building]
I had nothing to do with Sal and Willy.
Whatever they did in seven years,
I had no knowledge of.
I was inside my house.
I was there with my son.
It was right after breakfast.
My wife's car was in front of my van.
She had to move my car to get hers.
And when she backed up, the bomb went off.
[explosive booming]
Broke every goddamn window in the house.
I grabbed the gun, and ran out.
My son was screaming, "Mama! Mama!"
[somber music plays]
My wife, she didn't get hurt.
Thank God. [scoffs]
Man, that was a fucking time.
From then on, I became total enemy
because I knew
they had to be the ones who did it.
I became an outsider
and I guess they were worried
that I was gonna testify.
[Chris] I was cautioned by an attorney
in preparation of the case
that you really don't know
what you're dealing with
with Falcon and Magluta.
They would resort to anything
in order to save their own skins.
["Blood Sport" by Pitbull playing]
Woo!
Sniff, co- ♪
Snort, -caine ♪
Deal, cow- ♪
Extort, -boys ♪
Will, will, kill, kill ♪
For the love of the blood sport ♪
They'll do 25 to life
For the love of the blood sport ♪
It was not a good time in anyone's life
to be associated with the Willy
and Sal case as a potential witness.
Yeah, we made a new channel on Miami.
It's called Recut, Recut, uh, Channel.
[laughs]
[Chris] Juan Barroso smuggles numerous
boatloads of cocaine importations
into South Florida for Falcon and Magluta,
and he was named in the indictment.
[dramatic music playing]
I was at my house
and I had the car outside.
You know what they did?
They sliced the tire.
Well, I'll go to the station
and change it.
I got in the car
with my son, six years old.
[car engine starts]
[music intensifies]
And when I got to the service station,
I got down. I was changing the tire.
And when I was putting the tire in
[gunshots firing]
They shot me in the arm
and one hit back here.
It hit the floor and hit me over here.
My son said, "Don't shoot him!"
And the guy turned around
and started running.
So he saved my life.
"Don't shoot him. Don't shoot him."
[laughs]
I thought it was Willy and Sal.
I said,
"Okay, so you going to order me killed?"
Now I'm gonna testify.
[Frank] Pedro Rosello was one
of their top lieutenants,
one of their main confidants.
Willy's brother married Pegy's sister.
So, Pegy and Willy
were truly like brothers.
[Alexia] While Peter was out on bond
that year, um, little Peter's born.
There was a hit on him the night
that I was giving birth.
[somber music plays]
[Frank] Willy found out that Pegy
had turned government informant
and was going to testify against him
as one of his main witnesses.
It was just, like, disastrous to Willy.
[Pegy] Peter's born. I'm ready to go home.
It was, like, ten o'clock at night.
And I'm leaving and Alexia's like,
"No, no, no, you can't leave.
You can't leave me here by myself."
So I stayed that night.
He never got out of the hospital,
so they were never able, you know,
to to kill him.
If he would go home that night, no way.
They were waiting for him
in the parking lot.
[sirens wailing]
[Pegy] I wasn't mad.
Going into this since I was young,
I mean, there's consequences, you know.
"Oh, you know, there was a hit on you."
I didn't care.
'Til this day, I don't care.
You didn't get to kill me.
So I'm fine with that.
You know, I'm alive.
There were several other
murders and attempts.
[reporter] The next to talk
about the Falcon Gang, Lazaro Cruz.
He was shot outside his Hialeah home.
He lived, but the attackers escaped.
[Pat] Every six months, there seemed to be
a new attack on a potential witness.
[reporter] Luis Escobedo, who was going
to testify against his old friends,
was shot to death
outside a Coconut Grove Bar.
[Chris] Murdered by virtue of the fact
they're going to testify
against Falcon and Magluta.
[reporter] And yesterday, the latest
on the witness list, Bernardo Gonzalez,
was gunned down.
Nothing like this had ever happened.
A real, plotted, concerted effort
to eliminate witnesses
is comparable maybe
to a big Mafia case in New York City.
Here's the $60,000 question,
are there any witnesses left?
The government officials didn't return
our phone calls today and you can bet
if they have witnesses, those witnesses
certainly aren't sticking their heads up.
Now, just from a common-sense standpoint,
you go, "Hm, what's the common denominator
for all these people?"
[Pat] You had to conclude
that Falcon-Magluta,
they had something to do with it.
[Jim] Even though everyone believed it was
Willy and Sal orchestrating these murders,
there was no evidence
to support it at that point.
The government has never presented
the first bit of it in court.
And so, all of this
is just trial by news link.
Far as the murders went,
they were under investigation,
but we were focused on the drug trial.
I gotta tell you, if ever there was
a major motion picture waiting to happen,
this one has got to be it.
[Jim] Willy and Sal are front-page news.
They're all over the place.
Their trial is upcoming.
Billions of dollars in cocaine,
millions in drug profits,
and a trail of dead government witnesses.
So I open up The Miami Herald,
and I see this article about
two very infamous Miami characters.
[salsa music playing]
They are described as cocaine kingpins.
- Kingpins.
- Kingpins.
[Bobby] The allegations against them
were that they were responsible
for almost all the cocaine
to come into this country.
- [reporter] More than 75 tons.
- [reporter 2] Seventy-five tons.
[reporter 3] Seventy-five tons of cocaine.
I think somehow the government messed up.
Their career was 12 years?
It was probably, like, 175 tons
of cocaine, not 75 tons.
[Bobby] I joined up
with the adventures of Willy and Sal.
[funky music plays]
I was going to defend what I would
consider the quintessential Miami case.
[Pat] The defense team was formidable,
excellent lawyers, the best.
But the prosecutors
weren't exactly slouches themselves.
Chris was the young gun on the team.
This was his first really big case.
[Chris] It probably rankled Falcon
and Magluta
thinking that they were deserving
of a more accomplished
and acclaimed
prosecutor than the likes of me.
This was gonna be the case that
was gonna define his career, he believed.
[Chris] Given the stature
of the defense attorneys in this case,
I thought it was prudent to seek out
our best, most experienced prosecutors.
Pat Sullivan is an icon
within the US Attorney's Office.
[Jim] You can go through all the cases
he did, like the Miami River Cops case.
[reporter] The federal government
investigating allegations
of unprecedented corruption
within the Miami Police Department.
[Jim] The prosecution of Noriega.
[reporter 2] Government prosecutors
refused to say anything
as they waded through the crush
of reporters
who are here in Miami
to watch the Noriega trial.
Pat was a natural person to work with me
in the trial of Falcon and Magluta.
[Pat] They were charged with what's called
"a continuing criminal enterprise,"
a charge that's reserved
for a drug kingpin.
[Marilyn] I was concerned about Sal.
They were going to trial for conspiracy
to distribute cocaine and all that.
Sal and Willy
would be put in jail for life.
[dramatic chords play]
[reporter] Jury selection
taking place today
in federal court in downtown Miami.
Some of the questions
more than 100 jurors will have to answer,
"Have you heard about this case?"
[producer] I have to ask you
about choosing the jury.
This was a very meticulous process.
[laughing]
I have to laugh at the fact
when you talk about jury selection
being a carefully orchestrated process.
You have to recognize
that horse racing is a more exact science
than jury selection.
[Frank] You can see
this case involves drugs.
Do you think that with your feelings
you could be a fair and impartial juror?
[woman] Yes.
[Frank] Anyone feel they cannot be
a fair and impartial person
in a case involving
drugs and drug dealers?
[Jim] The defense had so much money,
they hired three mock juries.
They were like focus groups to go
through the evidence and get a sense
of what the real jury
may respond to in court.
[Frank] Informants. Do you feel that
someone should be convicted
just on the basis of the testimony
of an informant, how's that?
[jurors] No.
You have a hundred, two hundred people
who are allegedly selected by draw.
And they descend into a world
they never wanted to be even close to.
And you're supposed to look
at those people
after responses to a few questions
and determine whether
that person can be fair,
when let's face the fact,
you're not looking for a fair juror.
You're looking for a juror
who's biased towards your case.
[Frank] Just because someone's charged
with a crime, there's something to it?
- [juror 1] No.
- [juror 2] Yes.
- [Frank] Think there's something to it?
- [woman] Yeah, why would they charge him?
One of the questions I always ask is,
"Do you believe where there's smoke
there has to be fire?"
[Frank] So, where there's smoke
there's fire?
- [juror 1] Yep.
- [juror 2] Not all the time.
Because that then shifts
the burden to me to prove the clients
not guilty as opposed to the way
it should be by law is for the government
to prove that the defendant is guilty.
[Frank] If you were in jail
and I offered you an opportunity
to get a reduced sentence,
would you rat out your brother?
[woman] I sure will, my momma too.
[laughter]
The government made its selections
and the defense made theirs.
I laugh to this day about lawyers
being very pompous
about, "Well, I selected this juror."
"This juror was my juror.
No question about it."
Oh, please.
[woman] It was the summer of 1995.
I was 23 years old.
My mother called to notify me
that I had received a manila envelope
from a federal judge.
It included a sealed jury summons
along with a two-page letter
listing the name of the case.
It said, "United States of America versus
Augusto Falcon and Salvador Magluta,"
and that I was a prospective juror.
I didn't know anything about them.
I only knew the name Willy Falcon,
that he was a drug dealer.
The only media coverage I remember
was a witness was killed
in Horse Country, him and his brother,
by two Colombian hit men.
And I remember the pictures
that came out in the news.
I never imagined
that I would be picked as a juror.
I did not read the newspaper.
I did not turn on the news.
I did not, all right?
So, I remained extremely naive.
I was working at an elementary school.
I was teaching first grade.
I got a jury summons almost every year
and I was raised that it was my civic duty
to go to serve,
and I'm always picked for the jury.
This one was a little different.
It said this was gonna be a longer trial.
You know, I'm in the teaching profession,
and to me a trial was a mini vacation.
There's 12 jurors and four alternates,
so 16 jurors were four African-Americans
set up in this left-hand corner,
about six Hispanic over here,
and I'm over here, and another,
we'll say Caucasian, all right?
Oh, I hate to say it,
but there was segregation in our group,
which was really a sad thing to say.
Just the usual division
that you see in society
that we don't want to acknowledge.
[reporter] We're coming up now
on three and a half minutes to the reading
of the verdict
in Judge Lance Ito's courtroom
[man] All right, Mr. Simpson, would you
please stand and face the jury?
[Chris] During the Falcon-Magluta case
awaiting trial,
the O.J. Simpson case had occurred.
[woman] In the matter of the people
of the State of California
versus Orenthal James Simpson,
we the jury find the defendant
not guilty of the crime of murder.
- [cheering]
- [applause]
[Chris] I saw what took place
in California, Los Angeles,
with the OJ case,
and I saw parallels
with the Falcon-Magluta case.
[Bobby] People in Miami understand
not everything is always as it seems,
and I think people in Miami
have a distrust of the government.
Two weeks after an unbelievable
acquittal of O.J. Simpson,
and we were walking in
on a much more hopeful note.
Yes, it is possible that
cross-examination can win a trial.
Yes, it is possible that
a jury will just doubt the case.
Overwhelming evidence,
it's not necessarily enough to convict.
[Verdi's "Libiamo, ne' lieti calici"
from La Traviata playing]
[reporter] Finally, Willy Falcon
and Sal Magluta have ended up here,
a federal court in downtown Miami
on the tenth floor today.
Extra security all over the place.
There are federal agents up there,
even a metal detector
right outside of the courtroom.
Courtroom's a theater.
["Libiamo, ne' lieti calici"
continues playing]
And this trial was the best show
that Miami has ever seen.
Chris Clark gets up before the jury.
"May I present to you the case
of the United States of America
versus Augusto Guillermo Falcon
and Salvador Magluta."
"Willy and Sal, los muchachos, the boys."
And then with just a slight flourish
of his right hand,
he just steps off to the left and turns
and motions towards the two of them
sitting at the defense table.
And you could just see
every juror just move from Chris Clark
over to that defense table,
where Willy and Sal are sitting.
And they're impeccable.
They are in suits that are more expensive
than anything the defense attorneys
next to them are wearing.
Every bit the drug kingpins the government
would want them to look like.
All the defense team just lined up
right there.
[man] What you're going to hear now
is the government's
opening statement
by the United States attorneys.
[man] Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
I'm the assistant United States Attorney.
A grand jury has returned an indictment
charging these two defendants
with running
the largest cocaine enterprise
uncovered in the history
of law enforcement.
[Chris] The opening that I gave
in this case detailed Falcon and Magluta.
And it depicted them as the Miami
success story that had gone awry.
They had unlimited access
to large quantities of cocaine
that the Colombian cartel
needed to have transported successfully
into the United States.
Falcon and Magluta provided the means
to bring drugs in by boat and by pilots,
who would fly the cocaine from Colombia
through transshipment points
in the islands
and arrived in South Florida.
The government had assembled
a great number of witnesses
who themselves
were involved in the narcotics trade,
who had worked with Falcon and Magluta
in one guise or another,
including Louis Mendez, Pegy.
Juan Barroso, despite the fact he was shot
and survived the attempted murder,
he did testify.
Jorge Valdes turned his drug business
over to Falcon and Magluta
and provided them
with the contact with the Medellin cartel.
And Tony Posada,
despite the attempt on his life
with the car bombing that did not succeed
in killing him, he too testified.
[gavel banging]
[Jim] The government had 80 people
on its witness list.
It was "a mountain of evidence,"
as the O.J. Simpson prosecutors would say.
[Albert] During the course of the trial,
I sat at one end of the counsel table
and because I've had trouble
with my hearing,
I have lost to some extent,
a control of the volume of my voice.
And I have a big voice.
And I can fill up a courtroom
with my voice.
And there would be
some evidence introduced
that was damning beyond imagination.
And I would mutter, I thought,
"Devastating!"
That was the word.
[Jim] Here's the way it would go.
Chris Clark would present a witness,
lead 'em through their testimony,
present every bad thing they could find
about Willy and Sal and then sit down.
The government got up
and laid out their case
and everything sounded pretty bleak.
[Jim] And then Krieger would stand up.
[Bobby] When Albert stands up,
every guy turns toward him,
- [Beethoven's "Fifth Symphony" plays]
- the barrel chest comes out.
And we thought, "All right, here we go.
Let the games begin." And they did.
[Chris] A witness could say the sky
is blue, and after two hours of Al Krieger
confounding him
with his variety of questions,
no longer would you be sure
that the sky was blue.
These witnesses are not believable
and I'm being very kind when I say that.
Albert doesn't use a shotgun
to take out a witness.
He uses needles.
And he pinpricks 'em
'til they bleed to death.
Each one was excoriated
by cross-examination.
There was a back and forth
with one witness.
"Why are you testifying today?
What is the deal that you have?"
"How long have you been
in the drug business?"
Every question was stupid. He's like,
"Well, did you not perjure yourself
in your first trial?"
[Jim] "Have you lied on the stand before?
You have lied on the stand before."
"So, you're a perjurer. You've perjured
yourself. You are a perjurer."
"You are a perjurer!"
I looked at Albert Krieger
and I'm like, "You're an asshole!"
[Jim] One of the worst witnesses by far
was Tony Posada.
[Bobby] Tony Posada denied almost every
cross-examination question from Krieger.
The bald-headed guy,
what the hell was his name? Krieger.
He didn't ask the right questions.
I don't know.
I was not involved.
[Jim] Krieger stands up and reads
what the US Attorney, in another trial,
said about Tony Posada.
"No one should ever believe anything that
Tony Posada ever says in a courtroom."
"He is a habitual liar
who will never, never tell the truth!"
[Bobby] It was a very telling moment
of how lacking in veracity
cooperating witnesses can be.
"You can't believe anything
the prosecution witnesses are telling you,
because they're trying to get a deal."
[Albert] The government can give you
your liberty.
"You testify in the fashion
that I'm seeking,
you are a free man."
[Pat] The only people who know
the inner workings of a conspiracy
are those who participated in it.
You don't find swans
swimming in the sewer.
[Jim] So, the prosecutors,
they knew they had bad witnesses.
So what they wanted to do
was try to convey to the jurors,
"Common sense tells you,
these are drug kingpins."
[Bobby] If Willy and Sal
were not involved in the drug trade,
how did these two dropouts end up
holding gold bars in tuxedos in Vegas?
Falcon, Magluta had no legitimate assets,
never worked a day in their life.
[Jorge] The government didn't need
a witness to convict. All they needed was
just to take pictures of their lifestyle.
[Jim] Every chance they got,
came back to how much money they spent,
how their lifestyle was so lavish,
powerboats, the jet planes,
the prostitutes, the Bee Gees.
'Cause we're living
In a world of fools ♪
[Jim] "Who else would hire the Bee Gees
to play their brother's wedding
but drug kingpins?"
"They must be drug kingpins!
You must convict them!"
Where's all this money coming from?
[Jim] The defense's response
was a fairly simple one.
"Yes, our clients were drug dealers."
"But the crimes they were willing
to admit that they committed,
are all well outside
the statute of limitations now."
The defense beyond the fact that
all the government's witnesses
are lying, cheat drug dealers,
was the statute of limitations defense.
"Please acquit these two men
on a legal technicality."
"Yes, they are prominent drug dealers,
but they quit drug-dealing five years
before the return of the indictment."
"Therefore, their prosecution is barred
under the statute of limitations defense."
[Jim] They're former drug kingpins
just living off the proceeds,
as if there was some sort of
drug kingpin pension program.
This is a novel defense,
one that I never encountered before.
Whoever came up with that,
I mean, it was good. It was good.
Was it true or no? It wasn't true.
We were working to the last day.
"We're drug dealers,
but we quit shortly after Jorge."
"Yeah. Put Jorge up there."
"Ask him."
"He'll tell you."
[Chris] Jorge Valdes did testify.
[Jorge] I testify. When I got arrested,
I hand the cartel over to Sal and Willy.
And when I came out of prison
and I went back to see him in 1982,
believing to collect my seven
or ten million dollars,
that technically they owed me,
they didn't give me a penny.
They told me they had quit.
And I looked at them.
I looked at Sal and Willy
when the defense asked me
and I said, "They had to have quit."
Whether I believed it was irrelevant.
I needed to believe that they had quit
'cause the betrayal
would've been too horrible.
I loved him. I loved him
as much as I love my brother.
I still love him as much as my brother.
Shit, I'm going to prison.
I'm 23, I wanna die.
I'm willing to die for everybody.
And I come out of prison,
you're gonna fuck me over money?
As I looked at him in court, I said,
"They either quit for real,
or they're the biggest son of a bitches
in the world that betrayed me."
[dramatic music plays]
[Chris] After a jury would hear
from not just one,
but a second, a third, a fifth,
a tenth, a fifteenth, a twentieth,
a fiftieth cooperating witness
who all tell a consistent story,
and you add to that hundreds of thousands
of dollars in cash lying about
and drug ledgers implicating them.
At some point in time, a reasonable jury
will find the defense guilty.
There was enough evidence
that was provided to the jury in a case
that had spanned four months
to convict these two defendants
one hundred times over.
[gavel bangs]
[juror 2] We needed
to find a jury foreman.
[woman] Does anybody know how to be
a foreperson and like to volunteer?
[juror 2] Miguel Moya,
he was juror number one.
Moya was hanging out
with three other women
that he had become very close to.
They all made him the jury foreman.
[man] Give the man the verdict form.
Not a big job.
[juror 2] Because of all
the media attention,
Moya sent a note to the judge.
"The jury should be sequestered."
[reporter] The jurors wrote that quote,
"Pressure outside
the courtroom is tempting."
The judge granted their request.
Attorneys involved say this is
unheard of, but is a pleasant surprise.
They are asking to undergo
the inconvenience of sequestration
in order to be sure that they do their job
in a fashion consistent with the law.
That to me is wonderful.
[juror 2] We said goodbye to our family.
We were not allowed to have cell phones.
We started deliberating.
[dramatic music plays]
[man] Now, y'all need to deliberate.
We'll see you later. Thank you.
[juror 2] There was 17 counts
in the indictment.
On day one, we went voting to see who
thought they were guilty of each count.
And right away,
all but three counts were dismissed.
The prosecution was showing us things,
but what they presented was very little.
We're told that
these are big, gangster type guys,
and, you know,
they looked like Laurel and Hardy.
I mean, you know,
if they passed me on the street,
they weren't guys I'm gonna run away from.
The guys who looked like gangsters
were the attorneys.
But the government, they're telling us
there's tons and tons of cocaine about.
Throughout the entire trial,
the only cocaine we ever saw physically
was a bag full of cocaine
that was found in Falcon's house
that they passed around to all the jurors.
[salsa music playing]
On the three counts that were left,
conversations were different.
[man] How many say the defendants
are guilty? Raise your hands.
One, two, three, four,
five, six, seven. You're not sure?
[woman] I'm not sure. It has to do
with the statute of limitations.
[juror 2] There was seven of us,
including myself,
that were voting "guilty."
It became very heated because
one of the African-American jurors
stated that they were guilty,
because they were Cuban
and they had a lot of money.
[indistinct arguing]
Soon after that, there was
a physical altercation in the jury room
with Miguel Moya
and a young African-American gentleman.
All of a sudden, an older gentleman
said he was having chest pains.
And he was taken to the hospital.
I suspect that because
the tension was so high,
that he used whatever excuse he could
to be removed from that situation.
[sirens wailing]
[Jim] Pretty early on, they figured that
most of the witnesses couldn't be trusted.
[woman] I would find them not guilty
because those witnesses,
I don't rely on them. [laughs]
[juror 2] And we were left with one count.
That one count left,
we called the "Pegy count,"
which was related to Pedro Rosello.
[melancholy music plays]
I think the jurors gave him credibility
because you could see a direct connection
to the family.
Did I tell the truth?
Yeah. I did tell the truth.
I didn't lie about anything.
The jury room was divided.
The individuals
that were voting "not guilty"
all sat on one side of the table.
Moya continuously said,
"The government did not prove their case."
He refused to listen to testimony.
No matter what we said, he was adamant.
So, we were deadlocked.
We have a breaking story into NBC 6,
new developments in the trial
of two alleged cocaine kingpins.
From the defense to the prosecution,
the verdict caught everyone by surprise.
It was Sal who called me.
And he said, "We're going in."
And I said, "Good luck."
[quiet piano music playing]
[Chris] Falcon and Magluta
were brought out in their $3,000 suits,
but they're still manacled
because they're still in federal custody.
And they had an ashen look on their faces.
They appeared
as if they were walking to the gallows.
When the jury came back in,
Willy and Sal's family
were in the gallery.
Prosecutors were starting
to fill the courtroom.
Law enforcement officers
were filling the courtroom,
all the defense attorneys
scrambling to get back.
Moreno sits on the bench
and the verdict starts getting read.
[gavel banging]
When that first count comes across
[man] Not guilty.
first it's like a gasp.
Like of disbelief.
["You Should Be Dancing"
by Bee Gees playing]
Did they say, "Not guilty"?
[woman] Not guilty.
And then next count.
[woman] Not guilty.
That was astounding.
[woman] Not guilty.
- And next one.
- [man] Not guilty.
- Next one.
- [woman] Not guilty.
- And one after another.
- [women repeating] Not guilty.
[Jim] Both Falcon and Magluta
are almost unable to stand.
[repeating] Not guilty.
[laughs] It was shocking, shall we say.
Now, another example of law and order
gone haywire, in the minds of many,
it happened in Miami.
[reporter] Witnesses against these guys
mysteriously disappear.
Lawyers for them are paid
millions and millions of dollars.
Tonight, a jury has returned a verdict
against Sal Magluta and Willy Falcon,
saying, essentially, "They didn't do it."
[reporter 2] Relatives and friends
of the defendants
celebrated the verdicts
outside of Miami Federal Courthouse.
In all of Miami, they were cheering.
[cheering, applause]
[reporter 3] Outside the courthouse,
the shell-shocked government team
heard howls of joy
explode from the adjacent jail
and from supporters
of the defendants on the street.
[cheering]
They had been acquitted
and I said, "Get a load of this."
[laughs]
[repeating in Spanish] Thank God.
Because he returned my son to me.
For both Mr. Falcon and Mr. Magluta,
it was a long time coming.
It took four and a half years of work,
but finally, it came to fruition.
The jury rejected lying government
witnesses. That's it, pure and simple.
I mean, I was happy for them.
Was I surprised? No.
Not at all.
I was shocked.
I was shocked.
I was shocked.
[Juan] I was in my cell, one guard
knocked on my window and says,
"Hey, your friends got acquitted."
And I said, "Yes!" But then I go,
"Wait a minute, I got 12 years to go."
"These guys are walking out?"
"Maybe I should've stuck with them,
instead of pleading."
So they were right.
[reporter] Four year ago,
after both defendants were arrested,
they offered the US Attorney's Office
a plea agreement.
Our sources say
the men were willing to plead guilty
and turn over 40 million dollars
in exchange
for prison sentences of 20 years.
A deal that overly-confident
prosecutors rejected.
[Albert] On the night of the acquittals,
my wife and I clicked on the television,
and there is Kendall Coffey.
This is certainly
one of the most startling results
uh, that I can recall in the time
I've been US Attorney in a narcotics case.
[laughing] Kendall looks straight
into the camera and says, "Devastating."
It was a devastating defeat for everyone.
[laughing] Well, I fell off the bed.
[reporter] The night after the verdict,
in an incident
that became the stuff
of South Florida legend,
the rising US Attorney was so despondent,
he allegedly went to a strip bar
to drown his sorrows
and ended up
biting a lap dancer in the arm.
He's lucky he bit me. If he bit
anybody else, he'd have a black eye.
[Jim] The US attorney ends up
being forced to resign,
just adding to the embarrassment.
[laughs] Another one bites the dust
because of Sal.
[reporter] Sal Magluta spent four
and a half years in prison
waiting for
and then going through his trial,
but this morning,
after posting a $25,000 bond,
Magluta walked down the steps
to the courthouse and went free.
Sal Magluta grinned ear to ear,
then thanked God
and family and his lawyers.
We went to trial.
We did it the way this country
and this constitution was meant
and I just hope it's respected
and not retaliation.
And I just pray. There's a part
of me left inside with Willy.
And, uh, I just hope
that he'll enjoy this day too.
[reporter 2] Let's talk, though,
about Willy Falcon.
He's still facing
six federal firearms charges.
Because of that, he is deemed a flight
risk as well as a danger to society.
He is disappointed, of course,
but he feels that he has won the big one.
[reporter] Did you think this day'd come?
Definitely.
Only my faith in God and my family
and those that surrounded me
gave me that hope and that will.
[reporter] Vowing he'd be going
to church today, Sal was off.
[organ music playing]
It cannot be overestimated
how embarrassing
this defeat was
for the federal government.
This isn't the way
these trials normally end.
[Pat] I thought
it was a terrible jury verdict.
I thought it was completely contrary
to the evidence.
This was a really strong case
against Falcon and Magluta.
The evidence was overwhelming.
I chalked it up that this was
some terrible miscarriage of justice.
They got their ass kicked.
They did.
There it is in The Miami Herald.
"Stunning win for Willy and Sal."
This is a major trial being handled
in a town
that knows the defendants
by their first names.
[Jim] Not only was this the biggest case
that had ever been lost
in the state of Florida,
this was the biggest criminal drug case
the United States government
had ever lost.
This was the greatest defeat
for the US justice department
in its history in its war against drugs.
Why? How? What happened?
That's the question
everyone wanted to know.
Did they really find them not guilty?
Or was there any hijinks
going on behind the scenes?
I felt very bad for the government,
because they had somebody on the jury
that was paid to work against them.
[dramatic music fades out]