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2062 prosecution. The dual contracts, which the FBI investigated thoroughly in the weeks af- ter Butler’s arrest, would not normally have gone to court, let alone been prosecuted as a federal crime. Now, the government added them as 54 new charges to Butler’s original 15-count indictment. Internal Revenue Ser- vice agents also delved into what they claimed were huge, nonexistent expenses on Butler’s 2001 tax return that saved him al- most $40,000 in taxes. All told, Butler was facing 69 counts that carried a maximum of 469 years in jail and $17 million in fines. Defense attorneys filed a barrage of un- successful motions to soften the blow. Dis- trict Judge Cummings rejected their plea to suppress Butler’s 15 January “admission.” He also shot down requests to recuse him- self because of his Texas Tech ties; to move the trial out of Lubbock, where the case was front-page news for months; and to separate the plague and fraud counts into separate tri- als. The defense team did win motions to suppress the polygraph results and to intro- duce heaps of e-mail evidence. For 16 days, Butler would’ stroll into the George H. Mahon Federal Building—just off Buddy Holly Avenue—looking sober and composed. The courtroom was a high- ceilinged, wood-paneled affair that was often so cold that everyone bundled up. One re- porter wore gloves, and a juror huddled under © a blanket. Butler’s wife always sat stoically behind her husband, often accompanied by her eldest son Thomas, a recent Stanford graduate in biology. The youngest, a 5-year- old son, wasn’t allowed in the courtroom.. Family friends took turns providing support. From the trial’s opening moments, pros- ecutors painted Butler as a man desperate to extricate himself from a hole he had dug with his own hands. Butler had reported the vials missing to distract attention from his IRB troubles and the financial investi- gations, they alleged. “The wagons were circled ... and he had a plan to lash out,” prosecutor Robert Webster told the jury. “He wanted to throw a monkey wrench in the internal affairs-of [the university].” But he didn’t expect Texas Tech officials to contact the police. Instead of starting “a bonfire,” Butler lit “a wildfire that [got] out of control,” said Webster, who looked like a tall cousin of Mark Twain and could be graciously polite and devastatingly sarcas- tic in the same breath, Prosecutors also heaped scorn on But- ler’s claim that he didn’t understand the pathogen-transport rules. His journal entry about the “challenges” of importing: samples showed that he knew enough to know better, they argued, as did his downloading of the rules from CDC’s Web site. Butler even warned other researchers about the stringent requirements, one scientist testified. Butler’s hand transport was also reckless, they claimed. Plague is “in its own way as serious as the atomic bomb,” argued prose- cutor Michael Snipes, a master of hyperbole with the physique of a linebacker. One of the trial’s most dramatic moments came when biosafety expert Barbara Johnson of Science Applications International Corp. easily crushed with one hand a plastic petri dish just like those that Butler had used to carry some plague cultures to USAMRIID. The dishes were a disaster waiting to hap- pen, she warned. . The defense never disputed that Butler broke the transport laws but argued that he did so unknowingly and in good faith. No- : body was ever harmed by Butler’s bacteria, defense attorneys repeatedly reminded the jury. And the scientist was only “doing what / the government wanted him to do,” said at- torney Chuck Meadows, a seasoned fraud * .defender who favored flamboyant ties and 3 spoke in a folksy Louisiana drawl. Three government agencies, including CDC, had ; encouraged Butler to go to Africa and then | praised his achievements. “And now they 4 charge him with a felony for not having a ; piece of paper from another branch of the CDC?” he asked. “Give me a break, folks!” The defense had a much harder time ex- plaining Butler's financial dealings, which prosecutor Webster pounded on for hours during his daylong cross-examination of the defendant. Butler claimed that his pri- vate payments from Pharmacia and Chiron, totaling more than $350,000 since 1996, were not for clinical work but were “com- panion consultancies” for his help in de- signing the studies, analyzing data, and writing papers. “They wanted me to be part of an inner circle of advisers,’ said Butler. Butler donated much of the money back to the university to fund his research, the de- fense suggested. But a Texas Tech auditor testified that the donations accounted for just $65,757 of the total. Pharmacia and Chiron officials, mean- while, disputed the consulting claim and noted that Butler was the only investigator involved in the trials who had twin con- tracts, Susan Stevens, a former contract ne- gotiator for Chiron, even checked with her legal department when Butler asked for one split. “Tt set off some bells and whistles in my head,” she said. But the lawyers told her it wasn’t the company’s problem. Webster also questioned how a meticu- 19 DECEMBER 2003 VOL302 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org CREDIT: PHOTODISC |