Howard Marks - Trial and Imprisonment

Trial and Imprisonment

Marks was taken from Palma to Modelo prison in Barcelona, and then to Alcala-Meco in Madrid. There he was handed a 40 page document which detailed the allegations of his drug smuggling activities between 1970 and 1987, charging him with operating a racket as described in the RICO act. In his autobiography, Marks stated that "although the charge against Judy and some others were absurd, the formal accusations against me, in general terms, were true." The recently passed Sentencing Reform Act meant that he was facing a minimum of ten years to a maximum life sentence without the possibility for parole. The Audiencia Nacional ordered his extradition to Florida. After being shown the prosecution evidence against him, Marks attempted to construct the defence that his smuggling operations were directed to Australia and that he never exported to the United States, and therefore never broke US law. He again cultivated the myth that he was a spy for MI6, and claimed that he was set up by the CIA because he had discovered that CIA agents were smuggling drugs into Australia. He and his lawyers spent hours reviewing the phone tapping evidence in order to make the coded conversations about smuggling into America seem to suggest that the drugs were actually being smuggled into Australia; research was done into weather patterns to prove tentative links between what was said by Marks and his associates and what was happening at the time in Australia. Marks and his wife were extradited in 1989, and he was given the Miranda rights on the flight from Spain to the US.

In Florida, Judy plead guilty to her small part in the racket and was released, having already served some months in prison in Spain. The money Marks made from his smuggling operations was spent on legal fees. He refused to plea-bargain or to inform on his associates, gambling that he could again convince a jury that the authorities had got the wrong man. However as the trial began in July 1990, Peter Lane, his brother-in-law and fellow smuggler, wrote to Marks to inform him that he was going to testify against Marks in court in order to get a more lenient sentence himself. Marks still was confident of beating the DEA in court, however Ernie Combs also agreed to testify for the prosecution so as to secure the release of his wife, and Marks had little choice but to change his plea to guilty to racketeering charges. He was sentenced to 25 years in jail and given a $50,000 fine; though he had originally been sentenced to 15 years he was taken back into court after the judge realized he had misspoken and said that his 10- and 15-year sentences were to run consecutively and not, as he had originally stated, concurrently.

He spent seven years imprisoned in the Federal Correctional Complex, Terre Haute, Indiana; a rough prison, he had originally been sentenced to Butner, but agent Lovato insisted that he instead serve time at Terre Haute. One of the six most secure prisons in the country, Terre Haute had the worst reputation of the six for gang rape and violence. Despite this, Marks remained on good terms with the many violent inmates housed there as he was "British and a famous non-rat" and avoided conflict "by being nice, charming, and eccentric". During his time there he befriended many notorious criminals and members of four of the reputed Five Families, including: Gennaro "Gerry Lang" Langella (Colombo crime family); James "Jimmy C" Coonan, John "Johnny Carnegs" Carneglia, Vittorio "Little Vic" Amuso, and Frank "Frankie Loc" LoCascio (Gambino crime family); Anthony "Bruno" Indelicato (Bonanno crime family); and Joey Testa (Lucchese crime family). He also made friends with Veronza Bowers, Jr. (Black Panther Party) and 'Big Jim' of the Outlaw motorcycle club.

Due to his status as an Oxford University graduate with alleged connections to the British Secret Intelligence Service he was treated as a potential escapee and spent many weeks in solitary confinement, though he never actually attempted to escape or threaten other prisoners or prison staff. During his time in prison he found success as a jailhouse lawyer for the other inmates, securing one overturned conviction. He gave up cigarettes for the last three years of his sentence. In January 1995, Marks was granted parole after a prison officer testified that he was a model prisoner who spent much of his time helping his fellow prisoners pass their GED exams. He had been scheduled for release on the same date as Mike Tyson, 25 March 1995, though he was in fact released two weeks later due to a bureaucratic error.