Former prosecutors defend plea deals - Agreements with defendants are tools that bring in useful information Forbes and Clifford say

Two former Kanawha County prosecutors defended the use of plea agreements on Thursday, calling them a necessary and important law enforcement tool.

Their comments came after Keith Jeffers -- who was given a suspended prison sentence and placed on home confinement and probation after he entered into a plea agreement with prosecutors in 2003 -- was arrested in the deaths of three people in Amandaville this week.

"It's a necessary tool to plea bargain with bad people to get them to help you," said former Kanawha County prosecutor Bill Forbes. "Without that tool, a lot of cases can't be made."

Jeffers, 30, pleaded guilty to malicious wounding without a firearm and conspiracy to kidnap with a firearm in November 2003. He was indicted for his part in a brutal home invasion, in which he and two other men beat and tortured a man while they forced a woman to sit in the living room.

According to the criminal complaint, Jeffers forced the man into a bathtub full of water where he tried to shock him with an extension cord. The other assailants then tried twice to cut off the victim's right pinkie finger, but failed when both of the knives they used were too dull.

Forbes, who was not in office when prosecutors cut a deal with Jeffers, said he believes Jeffers had "significant information" about criminal activity on Charleston's West Side at the time.

He said it was unfair to blame Circuit Judge Tod Kaufman, who put Jeffers on probation, for Jeffers' subsequent actions.

"Judges make easy targets because they can't defend themselves," Forbes said. "All [Kaufman] did is what the prosecutor asked him to do. As a result of what they did together, some murders were solved, and some people got put away."

Mike Clifford, who was the county's prosecuting attorney when the plea agreement was made, said Thursday he didn't remember Jeffers' case specifically, but accepted responsibility because it happened on his watch.

He said he trusted the judgment of the assistant prosecuting attorneys who signed the plea agreement with Jeffers, Don Morris and Rob Schulenberg.

Clifford said it was common practice for prosecutors to enter into plea agreements with potentially dangerous people and to stand silent during sentencing.

"What you hope to do when you're a prosecutor is to offer plea agreements to the least culpable," said Clifford.

Phil Morrison, executive director of the West Virginia Prosecuting Attorneys Institute, said television shows like "C.S.I." have given the public unrealistic expectations that physical evidence alone can produce felony convictions.

"Prosecutors routinely -- because there's no other way to access certain types of evidence -- make deals with people who are involved with the commission of crime," said Morrison, who worked as an assistant prosecutor under Clifford.

"If you want to try the devil, sometimes you have to go down there to get your witnesses," Morrison said.

At the time of the plea agreement, Clifford said, law enforcement faced a lot of pressure to get violence on the West Side under control.

"We had a tremendous amount of homicides during that time," Clifford said. "It seemed like we had a shooting a week."

Forbes said that judges needed to rely on prosecutors -- and their successors -- not to hammer them if a plea agreement turns bad.

"There has to be an institutional consistency and acceptance of the risks that we take when we make those deals," he said.

Morrison emphasized that judges and prosecutors don't have crystal balls and can't predict the future.

"You plea bargain for what they can give you right now, not what they may do in the future," he said.

"Whoever made the call on [Jeffers], I'm sure that they made the call for a reason," Morrison said. "They got something out of this guy, or they wouldn't have done it. And it was probably something major."