Free How to Get Away With Murder in America by Evan Wright

called Hinman into their office and informed him of Albert’s immunity. All Hinman could say was, “You guys have got to be kidding me.” Apparently, Hinman now notes, “Lehtinen kept the deal in his desk.”
    Confronted with Albert’s immunity deal several months into their investigation, the OCS sought evidence that Albert was engaging in new criminal activities that his agreement would not cover. Fisten was assigned to surveil Albert with the OCS member to whom he’d grown closest, a detective named Mel Velez. A former Marine and Vietnam vet, Velez shared Fisten’s absolute commitment—bordering on self-righteousness—to police work.
    Fisten characterizes their surveillance efforts as worthy of the Keystone Kops. When he and Velez moved onto a boat in a canal near the barbershop they suspected Albert used as a cocaine distribution hub, they awoke one morning to find someone had cut the mooring lines and set them adrift. When they set up an observation post at the water plant by Albert’s house, Hialeah cops tried to arrest them, even after Fisten presented his badge and his business card. Fisten discovered that his home phone had been bugged by a Southern Bell employee, who later pleaded guilty to illegal wiretapping. “Our investigation was like a streetfight,” Fisten says. “And Albert was kicking the shit out of us.”
    Federal prosecutors, outraged by the immunity deal their boss had granted Albert, sought to break it. Albert’s immunity did not protect him from state murder charges, and though it lacked crucial language requiring him to cooperate, prosecutors believed it could be voided if Albert perjured himself. They planned to put him under oath before a grand jury and question him about alleged murders he seemed to refer to on tapes the OCS had transcribed. If Albert testified truthfully, he would open himself to murder charges. If he lied, they believed, his perjury would break his immunity and subject him to federal RICO charges. A federal judge would need to rule on whether their strategy was legal, but it was their only hope.
    In January 1991, Albert was subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury. Assistant U.S. attorney Diane Fernandez led the questioning, and being grilled by a strong Cuban American woman seemed to rattle Albert. He spoke more than he should have, giving prosecutors just enough, they believed, to prove perjury and nullify his immunity. They charged Albert, along with Erra and Redondo, on several RICO counts, based on evidence provided mostly by Baer and tapes from the earlier state case.
    On April 2, 1991, the OCS, accompanied by a SWAT team and two dozen black-clad federal agents, surrounded Albert’s home. Albert’s mother let them in through the kitchen. Albert, dressed in a designer tracksuit, appeared behind her and asked, “What’s this about?”
    “You’re under arrest,” Fisten said.
    “You can’t arrest me,” Albert said.
    “We just did,” several OCS investigators shouted as they cuffed him.
    Searching the house, Fisten was struck by the bizarre layout. “He built room after room with no rhyme or reason. Some had no windows. The doors were in the wrong places. It was like being inside a Lego house.” At the house’s Santeria shrine, Fisten made an unsettling discovery. His business card, taken by the Hialeah cops who had tried to arrest him at the water plant, was pinned by a knife to what Fisten called in his report “a voodoo-type figurine.” “I’m no expert on Santeria,” Fisten says. “But clearly he wasn’t wishing me Happy Hanukkah.”
    Dexter Lehtinen, who was then in the national spotlight as he prepared to lead the United States’ prosecution of Panamanian dictator General Manuel Noriega, had approved of his prosecutors’ efforts to overturn Albert’s deal. He had little choice: Had he hindered them from pursuing the case, it might have appeared that he was trying to protect Albert. But by allowing them to proceed, his heretofore