Pot Luck

When an Israeli moving man, his helper from Brooklyn and almost 400 pounds of marijuana failed to sneak through a Missouri weigh station in a shoddy truck last February, it seemed likely that someone would go to prison -- perhaps permanently -- for drug trafficking. But on Halloween, a jury in Clay County let the two men off.

Now only the bricks of pot remain from a case that could have led to bigger drug busts in New York and California but instead just wasted everyone's time. "I don't blame you," one fuming juror told the prosecutor after the verdict was read. "I blame the law enforcement."

Twenty-seven-year-old Pier Hay-Nir arrived in the United States in April 2000 as a student, intending to become a commercial airline pilot. But Hay-Nir soon ran out of money for flight school in Maryland, so he briefly took a job with a Florida moving company. Then New York Movers offered Hay-Nir a job in Brooklyn and helped him purchase a truck. "In the moving business, it's very difficult to get good people," says owner Avner Malloul.

Early this year, Hay-Nir was making deliveries in California for New York Movers when he drew an assignment to haul ten file cabinets to New York within a week for a West Coast moving company owned by David Suffrin. On February 14, Hay-Nir arrived at Suffrin's California warehouse with Jose Mateo -- a hulking 35-year-old furniture mover with a sixth-grade education and a history of car theft-- riding shotgun in Hay-Nir's blue 1994 Freightliner. After Suffrin's acquaintance, Shmuel Malihi, brought in and shrink-wrapped the file cabinets, Mateo loaded the truck. Hay-Nir filled out paperwork for the delivery, which would pay $1,000 when completed.

Three days later, Hay-Nir and Mateo pulled into an I-35 weigh station north of Liberty, Missouri, at 5:10 p.m. They would go no farther. Missouri Highway Patrol officer Travis Ellis almost immediately believed something was wrong. He noticed no registration on the truck, no fuel-tax decal and no tread on at least five tires. The scales revealed that the truck was extremely light for a cross-country trip: The cost of diesel fuel alone would likely make the trek financially pointless with its documented cargo. When Hay-Nir proved ignorant of rudimentary logbook rules and couldn't give Mateo's last name, a drug dog named Boris got on the case and sniffed out 377 pounds of marijuana in the filing cabinets. Hay-Nir and Mateo were arrested on trafficking charges for the $600,000 cargo.

Both men told officers they were unaware the weed was in the cabinets. Mateo said he didn't know where they were going, that he thought it was two states "up" and began with a B -- he guessed Baltimore. He also gave his name as Luis Mateo, who is actually his brother. Hay-Nir said they were going to New York by way of St. Paul, Minnesota, and Chicago. Hay-Nir even agreed to help federal agents by making a "controlled delivery" of the drugs to New York as part of a proposed sting, but the Drug Enforcement Administration declined.

When the case went to trial last week, jurors learned about the poor condition of the truck, the logbook violations and the discrepancy between Hay-Nir's and Mateo's stories. They also heard troopers testify that Hay-Nir had not listed filing cabinets on shipping documents.

Defense lawyers -- Brenda Cameron for Hay-Nir and public defender Byron Woehlecke for Mateo -- hammered away in court at the incomplete investigation. Detectives had not contacted Malloul, Suffrin or Malihi about the marijuana. Nor had they followed up on Hay-Nir's assertion that Malihi had received the cabinets from a man in California named David Brisky.

In fact, it was the defense who investigated and flew in Malloul, Suffrin and Malihi to testify that Hay-Nir and Mateo could not have known what was in the cabinets because neither did they. The only person who could have known was the owner of the filing cabinets.

Both Hay-Nir and Mateo took the stand. Through a thick accent, Hay-Nir testified that he had served as an officer in Israel's border police. Hay-Nir contended that he listed the cargo on shipping documents as "boxes" because he did not know the term "file cabinet."

Mateo, on the other hand, pleaded total ignorance of the cargo's nature, of the logbook violations and even of general U.S. geography. He was only a helper, getting $50 a day to load and unload the truck. "I just wanted to get it done, get it loaded and get back in the truck and listen to music," he testified.

Mateo said he used his brother's name to avoid being picked up on a parole violation for a New York car-theft conviction.

In closing statements, the defense argued that prosecutors were trying to treat the men's weaknesses -- Hay-Nir's foreign tongue and Mateo's inattention to detail -- as evidence of wrongdoing. "It seems they want you to convict them because of their limitations," Cameron told jurors. "Don't do it."

Prosecutor Larry Buccero argued that the two may not have been drug-ring masterminds but that "these guys were part of some conspiracy to transport marijuana."