Drug Prosecutor Found to Live in Glass House : Crime: She pushed for property seizures, but when her son was charged with selling drugs out of her car and home, push came to shove.

NEW HAVEN, Conn. —  Leslie Cayer Ohta made a name for herself as a zealous federal prosecutor who seized millions of dollars worth of property tainted by the drug trade.

In seven years of going after homes and businesses and cars used in drug deals, she never lost a case. She traveled the country, lecturing prosecutors and law enforcement officers on how to hit dealers where it really hurts.

Then, in December, the tables turned.

Her 18-year-old son, Miki, was arrested for selling LSD out of her car in their hometown of Glastonbury. There was also evidence he sold marijuana out of his parents’ house on one occasion in 1989.

The arrest cost Ohta her high-profile position. And though law enforcement authorities ultimately decided against it, Ohta risked losing her car and house under the very asset-forfeiture law that she had championed.

Her fall has occasioned little sympathy from those she prosecuted.

“I don’t feel very sorry for Ohta,” said Paul Derbacher, 83, of Hamden, who was forced to sell his house in 1988 after his grandson was charged with selling and storing drugs there. “My wife thinks she’s a barracuda.”

Others whose homes or cars had been taken by the government demanded that her property also be seized and were irate when nothing happened.

But Ohta remained unswerving in her support of the law. “I feel very strongly this is one of the most important weapons that law enforcement has at its disposal,” Ohta said, before she was reassigned.

Ohta, who would not give her age but appears to be in her 40s, came to the law comparatively late in life. Married to a Japanese businessman, the former Peace Corps volunteer graduated from the University of Connecticut law school in 1979 because she expected to return to Japan and thought a law degree would be the most marketable.

After four years as a trial attorney with the Justice Department, Ohta joined the U.S. attorney’s office in Connecticut in 1984, the same year the forfeiture law was toughened.

The law originally allowed real estate to be taken only if it were bought with drug proceeds. A new section was added to let the government confiscate real estate used to facilitate drug deals punishable by more than a year in prison.

Local and state police agencies were also allowed to share in the proceeds--a powerful incentive for them to pursue forfeitures.

Ohta quickly developed a reputation for aggressively pursuing cases.

Since 1984, federal authorities in Connecticut have seized $27 million in criminal assets, most as a result of drug cases. Ohta handled about 90% of the seizures. Nationwide, more than $2 billion in assets have been seized.

“Incarceration alone is just not the answer,” Ohta said. “That is particularly true in the state of Connecticut, where drug traffickers spend little or no time in prison.”

Even as her professional life progressed, her personal life teetered. Ohta says she first discovered that her son was using drugs in 1990. Miki Ohta was a bright student who played the viola, studied Russian, knew four computer languages and was college-bound until his life got off track.

His arrest on felony charges that he sold LSD out of his mother’s Chevrolet Blazer put law enforcement officials in a quandary.

The government need not have convicted Miki Ohta to go after his parents’ property. It would have needed only to establish probable cause that the property was used to facilitate a drug deal. To keep their property, owners must prove either that they did not know about or consent to the drug activity.

Glastonbury police said they did not ask federal authorities to seize the car because money was owed on it and it was not registered to Miki. They did not consider going after the Ohta home.

“Here we have a federal prosecutor who is not going to condone or allow her child to use the car for drugs,” Detective Michael Furlong said.

The U.S. Justice Department, which reviewed the case, concluded that Ohta was unaware of her son’s activities and therefore forfeiture was not warranted.

But John Schoenhorn, a Hartford attorney who has represented defendants who were targeted under the asset-forfeiture law, said Glastonbury police had another reason not to go after Ohta’s property: Leslie Ohta has helped them collect more than $360,000 in assets from drug and other cases.

Only six other Connecticut municipalities have taken in more money.

In any case, U.S. Atty. Albert Dabrowski found that Ohta’s effectiveness as head of the asset-forfeiture unit had been undermined. She was reassigned April 24 to tax and financial fraud cases.

Ohta said she understood her boss’ decision, but said her son’s problems had not made her more or less aggressive in pursuing cases.

She claimed she would have never targeted a case such as her own. She said she had never tried to seize a house based on a single sale of a small amount of marijuana by a minor to an unidentified informant.

Defense lawyers insisted that she might have pursued such a case, though they conceded that the seizure of her home would have been an extreme application of the asset-forfeiture law.

“I’m not criticizing them for not seizing the house. I’m criticizing them for using the same nebulous standards to seize all kinds of other persons’ houses and cars,” said Schoenhorn.

He said Ohta’s reassignment was best for everyone.

“Her position has probably been compromised to the point where it would be difficult for her to bring actions against parents whose children may have committed drug offenses in or around the home,” he said.

Her relationship with her own child is clouded. She was devastated to learn that he was still using drugs, and she refused to hire a lawyer for him; he had a public defender until Leslie Ohta’s brother hired a private attorney.

“If the only way Miki is going to learn is by going to jail, I’d rather he go to jail at 18 than at 28 or 31,” she said. “Maybe this is what he needs to get into a drug treatment program and beat his addiction.”

He moved out in January but not at her request, and is in drug treatment, Ohta said. The criminal charges against him are pending.

“If there is any point to this story,” his mother says, “it’s that here is a child who had everything going for him who became a social user of marijuana and became addicted to it, and how it had a tremendous impact on his life and on our family.”