David Correa -- #03627-068

Life in Prison -- Cocaine Conspiracy



David Correa, prisoner of the drug war
I refused to take a plea bargain for I believed I was entrapped by the US government and I truly believed that I would clear myself if I took my case to trial. Boy was I mistaken! Instead of the 3 years a plea agreement would have given me - I received life without parole!

I am serving a life sentence on what others said at trial for my only crime was to transport 495 grams of powder cocaine from my home town, Titusville, FL, to Altoona, PA, at the request of a friend who was working with the FBI. There was no money involved...it was just a favor that I was doing. The cocaine was given to me by the C.I. (Confidential Informant) to store until he could come back to pick it up. He never came back for it, instead he called on the phone one day and requested that the next time up in Pennsylvania, to bring it to him...Yea, Yea, I should have flushed it, but I did drive it up to him.

I am a graduate Engineer from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ. I was working for the government as an Engineer at their Kennedy Space Center Complex for NASA and held top secret clearance for I did work Payloads for DOD. I departed NASA in 1985, in good standing for I wanted to fly and so I went to work for Eastern Airlines. I was a first officer on board of Boeing 727-200 at the time of my arrest in November 15, 1989. I also was president and owner of several corporations in the State of Florida. Correa Enterprises was the parent company for both real estate and the sales and manufacture of firearms. The Gun Shop and Big Boys Toys sold and manufactured machine guns, silencers, et cetera and all done under government control with special licenses. Also, Space Port Aircraft Sales, Inc. sold both used and new aircraft including helicopters.

After my arrest, all companies went under in April of 1990 because the government would not issue licenses for I was under indictment. I lost everything and the government took all of my properties because I was under indictment for a drug trafficking crime. On my civil forfeiture, I wound up making deals with the government so that I could save something. In other words...50% to the Government and 50% for me or I would have lost it all to the banks! And the prosecutor knew it for he told me so!

And that my friends, is a crime.
______________________________________

A letter from David's mother.

Mr. William P. Perry
4406 Stanford Street
Chevy Chase, MD 20815-5208

Re.: Answers to some of your questions, your letter dated Tuesday, March 19, 1996.

Dear Mr. Perry:

David Correa with his parents
First let us take this opportunity to personally thank you for all your help and assistance that you have given our son during this horrible ordeal of his. Since our English is not that good, we have sent a letter to our son in Spanish and he will translate into English for you to have a better idea of what we were and did in Cuba prior to coming to this country. We hope that will fill some of the gaps and see that we always have had faith and trust in this country until now.

We arrived in America in 1960. Since that time we have worked non-stop so that we would not have to depend on any organization for support or be a parasite to this country. We have worked hard - and at numerous jobs - in order to pull ourselves up into a middle class society, here in the United States.

The hardest thing about coming here was that we had to leave all of our family behind. We had to do this not only to save our son from Communism but ourselves as well. We were a well-to-do family in Cuba, but we had to leave all our things behind. We knew that coming to this country would mean severing all ties with our family forever. That is what hurt us the most about coming to America at that time. But we had to run away from Castro's Communist regime, for our lives were at stake and we did not want for our son to be taken from us and raised as a communist.

We left Cuba with nothing except the clothes we were wearing. All of our properties such as the homes, jewelry, cars, clothes, furniture, and other personal items were all left behind forever.

While Batista was president of the Republic of Cuba, we worked for him as members of the Special Police Force which was the equivalent of the Secret Service here is the United States. Therefore, when Castro came into power, we had to flee the Island for our safety.

In order to protect our family, and as it is the dream of many immigrants, we immigrated to America. We then believe that this was the country where a person could live free without fear from the government. It was our intent to give our son, David, the best education possible and for him to grew a free person were political unrest and political terrorism was not heard of. But all of our sacrifice went to no avail. Our son and all his sacrifice, all the sleepless nights that he spent studying to become somebody, all was used against him at the trial instead of helping him. A dirty trial at that too, where everyone there was a paid government informant working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

At times, when we look back at all the injustice committed against our son, we wonder if we should have left him behind to be raised a communist. We never have felt that way until the day of his sentencing, after he was convicted by the use of paid informants, prosecutorial persecution, lies, and trickery in which a dirty, Reagan-appointed Federal Judge condemned our son to a cruel and unjust sentence of life for being an educated person of Cuban descent; a person who refused to cooperate with the government, a cooperation which entailed the setting up of innocent victims by our son for the government, and for being a person who the United States had given so much so that an example should be made of him and so life was given to him to punish and to use our son as an example.

No! We don't agree with that racist judge. We don't agree with such prejudice and such a dirty trial where there was no justice but only lies, smoke screens put there by the prosecutor and governmental trickery.

Everything that he is, all of his achievements, all those things he had done by himself through hard work, sleepless nights, and numerous sacrifices. No one has ever given him or us a thing that we did not earned of worked hard for. As a matter of fact, all we have ever done since the arrival into this country has been hard work and paying taxes!

We have lost all of our faith in the system. There is no more justice in America, only hidden tyranny and oppression. This is the land that at one time we looked upon as our savior but now we see it as our second Holocaust.

Our feelings changed the moment that it destroyed our only son's life. We pray that things change for the better some day and we give you and your wife many thanks for being there for our son during his moments of need when all his friends have turned their backs to him.

May God bless you both and keep you in his grace.

Sincerely yours,
Mrs. Ruth Correa