Teacher gets bail review in espionage case
A federal judge will conduct a bail review hearing Monday for a schoolteacher who has been in jail for 16 months, awaiting trial on federal espionage charges.
U.S. District Court Judge Robert Whaley raised the issue of releasing Deborah Cummings from custody at a hearing Wednesday in Spokane.
“She’s been in jail a long time,” the judge said of Cummings, brought to court by deputy U.S. marshals.
Cummings and her ex-husband, Rafael Davila, aren’t scheduled to stand trial until Sept. 27.
The judge suggested there may now be a combination of conditions that would warrant Cummings’ release from the Spokane County Jail before trial.
Cummings said she was threatened with being transferred to a military prison 600 miles from Spokane after she was interviewed by a reporter in February.
“It may be that she should be released,” Whaley said from the bench. “I don’t want her in jail an hour longer than is justified.”
The federal judge said he will be leaving town next week for most of the month and directed attorneys to prepare for the bail-review hearing before then. He scheduled the hearing for Monday.
“I’m hopeful we can prepare something now so she can be released,” said defense attorney Christian Phelps.
His client previously was denied release on bond after a jailhouse informant, who has a string of convictions related to dishonesty, provided information to FBI agents, Phelps said.
The informant’s tips triggered a series of additional searches for the missing national security documents, but nothing was found, the defense attorney said.
Assistant U.S. attorneys Earl Hicks and Stephanie Whitaker are expected to argue against releasing Cummings at next week’s hearing.
The prosecutors previously have argued that she presents a continuing threat to national security because, they contend, she knows the whereabouts of top-secret military documents that FBI agents haven’t found in a series of searches.
The special-education teacher, who taught in Pasco, was arrested by FBI agents on Feb. 3, 2003, in College Place, Wash., where she lived. She contends she no longer has the documents that allegedly were stolen from the military by her ex-husband.
Davila, a former Kaiser Aluminum Corp. executive, also was arrested Feb. 3, 2003, in Oregon where he lived.
Davila was charged with stealing and keeping top-secret and secret national security documents he had access to while he was an intelligence officer for the Washington Army National Guard.
Cummings was charged with keeping and distributing the documents. She divorced Davila after learning he wasn’t legally divorced from his first wife.
Federal investigators allege Cummings mailed the classified documents to anti-government and white supremacy groups. Cummings said that allegation “is the biggest crock of all.”
The federal investigation was begun in 1999 when Cummings called military authorities and told them about classified documents she’d seen in Davila’s possession. FBI agents interviewed Cummings more than a dozen times in 1999 and 2000, she said, before arresting her.
Davila was released from jail in mid-December under a $25,000 bond and electronic home-monitoring. He presently is living with his daughter in Spokane Valley.
Cummings previously was denied bail after federal prosecutors successfully argued that she is a “danger to the community.”
In an interview earlier this year, Cummings questioned the equity of a criminal justice system that denies bond to the person who provided information, starting the investigation, while the man accused of stealing the national security documents is released from jail on bond.
Defense attorney Mark Vovos, who represents Davila, filed legal motions, triggering Wednesday’s hearing.
Vovos asked the court to direct the government to release a list of 34 items, including the names of all prosecution witnesses in the forthcoming trial.
The defense attorney also asked the government to produce a list of records or log books showing every time Davila used special rooms, called Sensitive Compartment Information Facilities (SCIF), where he handled top-secret and secret documents while in the military.
Davila, who had top-secret clearance and was authorized to be a courier, is accused of taking some of the national security documents home with him, which wasn’t authorized.
Vovos told the court he was informed by prosecutors that the military didn’t keep records when Davila used the SCIF rooms to review the top-secret documents. “I understand there aren’t any,” Vovos said as Assistant U.S. Attorney Whitaker nodded in agreement.
The judge said he would dismiss Vovos’ motion as being moot at this time because prosecutors are releasing information to the defense attorney in conformance with the law.