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Date Rape Drug Is Topic In Bay Area Torture Trial Appeal

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By ELAINE SILVESTRINI | The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 8, 2008

JACKSONVILLE - Federal appeals judges said today they think the evidence in Steven Lorenzo's trial proved he gave some kind of drug to nine men, intending to commit a violent crime against them.

Whether that drug was the date rape drug gamma-hydroxybutyric acid is not as evident, judges said during arguments in Lorenzo's appeal.

Lorenzo, 49, is serving 200 years in federal prison for his convictions of distributing GHB to the men with the intent to commit a crime of violence and of conspiring with Scott Schweickert, 43, to drug and torture two men who died, Jason Galehouse and Michael Wachholtz, both 26, in December 2003.

The three-judge federal appeals panel is scheduled to hear arguments in Schweickert's case Tuesday. Schweickert is serving 40 years in federal prison for conspiring with Lorenzo and for administering GHB to Wachholtz with the intent to commit a crime of violence.

Lorenzo's court-appointed attorney, Ellis Rexwood Curry IV, argued that the evidence at the trial was insufficient to prove the drug charges. He said the prosecution inappropriately introduced evidence of murder in a drug case, inflaming the jury, causing it to convict even without adequate evidence of the drug offenses.

But the appeals judges brushed that claim aside, noting that the charge against Lorenzo was that he gave the victims the drugs with the intent to commit a crime of violence. "The two murders were crimes of violence," Judge R. Lanier Anderson said.

"I'll grant you they proved some rather shocking things by a preponderance of the evidence," said Judge James Hill. "The judge could consider them even if they would shock you."

Curry tried to argue that the federal courts did not have jurisdiction over the case. In his brief, he asserted that the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution has been stretched too far to give federal courts jurisdiction in cases where they don't belong. Curry talks in the brief about "horrid federal socialism" and the "USA's present growing police state."

But in court today, that argument didn't gain any traction with the judges.

"This was not a federal case. This was a murder case," Curry said.

"Federal courts have jurisdiction" over federal crimes, and the drug offense is a federal crime, Hill said.

At another point, Anderson noted there was evidence Lorenzo ordered GHB over the Internet, "which makes the interstate commerce argument frivolous."

Assistant U.S. Attorney David P. Rhodes noted trial testimony from men who said Lorenzo either served them drinks or they left their drinks unaccompanied near Lorenzo. They testified, he said, that the drink then tasted odd, salty, which an expert said is the taste of GHB. The men then lost the ability to defend themselves, Rhodes said.

Evidence, Rhodes said, included transcripts of Internet chats involving Lorenzo and Schweickert. In those chats, Rhodes said, Lorenzo discussed drugging victims with GHB before torturing them.

This, Rhodes said, was "direct evidence of a conspiracy."

"We write quite often that you seldom find a conspiracy put in a contract," Hill said. "But here we do."

Judges asked Rhodes whether in order to support a conviction, the prosecution had to prove that the drug used was GHB and that it was given with the intent to commit a crime of violence.

Rhodes said it wasn't necessary to prove that GHB was the drug but that jurors were instructed in the trial that they had to find that in order to convict.

Curry told a reporter in an e-mail last week that his oral argument in the Lorenzo case would "probably also include a comment about the book 'The prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder' by former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi."

Curry didn't quote from the book, except to tell the appeals court he had been misquoted by The Tampa Tribune. The judges seemed baffled as to why he had brought up the newspaper and told him to stick to the case.

The judges made no ruling today. Such decisions can take months.

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