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Gang prosecutor Floyd Andrews says Nash, his former star witness, turned snitch in 1993 when, at the foggy bottom of a fumbling criminal career, FBI agent LaFreniere was there waiting for him with an offer he didn't refuse.
At the time, Nash was going to Fresno State University under an assumed name and playing tailback for the college football team, the Bulldogs. His rap sheet at the time, which was launched in 1987 at the age of 19, included three convictions for possession of crack for sale.
He says he had moved to Fresno hoping to leave behind a San Francisco arrest warrant for attacking his wife with a knife. Down in the San Joaquin Valley, though, Nash couldn't help screwing up again: He got busted carrying crack and was ordered to participate in a drug program.
Somehow, LaFreniere found out, and Nash says he was returned to San Francisco. There, he faced the possibility of serious prison time for the knife attack and the violation of the probated sentence he received for a 1992 drug bust.
Back in S.F., with the state pen staring at him, Nash made a deal. Court records show that he was sentenced to a mere 79 days in jail -- a sentence that happened to precisely equal the time he had already served in jail.
Back on probation and out of jail, Nash was free to help the federal gang task force.
In June, Nash was busted for shoplifting and passing bad checks; he got probation again, he says. At the same time, he decided to split the state. It's unclear if he had LaFreniere's permission.
Nash landed in Kansas, where he attended a state college until May 1995. He also accumulated yet another criminal charge; this time it was sexual assault. Nash says he was tracked down again by LaFreniere, who convinced the Kansas authorities to hold off on the sex charge and allow him to take his informant back to S.F. Landing here in the summer of 1995, Nash promptly got in trouble again. He was arrested twice, for car theft and for yet another wife-beating. He got three months and in December was out on the streets again, working for the feds.
Nash says LaFreniere managed to develop another hammer to hold over him. In April 1996, Nash's brother was arrested for assaulting police officers in S.F. and faced up to five years in prison. "It was the weight over me," Nash says. "If I did the right thing, the case would go away."
In August, Nash took the stand against the Soul-Jacker.
Apparently, though, Nash thought he had done the task force enough favors. In November, he called Lefcourt, and in a matter of hours was in Temple's lawyer's office, drafting a declaration.
In his sworn declaration, Nash recants his grand jury testimony, describing how, he says, he was spun to rat on Temple. Nash's version is thick with police and FBI heavy-handedness. He says Hendrix, the S.F. police inspector, told him on two occasions that "street sources" were saying Temple was going to kill Nash's family.
Nash also says LaFreniere and Andrews called him to a meeting on Treasure Island. "I was told by [the men] that they wanted to get Bernard on drug-related homicides that were capital offenses and were using this case to incarcerate Bernard to encourage other witnesses to come forward," Nash's declaration says.
On Aug. 13, 1996, that declaration claims, Nash was arrested in Alameda Superior Court and returned to Andrews' office in the San Francisco Hall of Justice.
"I was threatened with being incarcerated and 'bounced around the system' for a long time and that I would never see daylight if I did not cooperate," the declaration says. "They told me that I didn't want to end up like my friend Eric Thomas, who had been shot and paralyzed by the police. If I did cooperate, they would get me whatever I wanted, and they would help me change my face and fingerprints and relocate my family. Later on I found out that someone was spreading my name around the street as an informant. I believe that this was another tactic of the police to pressure me into helping them."
Nash says his handcuffs were taken off only as he was being led to the grand jury room to give his shaky testimony against Bernard Temple.
"Even though I lied about everything else," Nash's recantation concludes, "I could not lie that I saw Bernard shoot Walter Mullins because I never saw it happen."
Andrews says the declaration is a pack of lies.
None of Nash's erratic behavior surprises Andrews. He knows well who his witnesses are, how much of a credibility problem each of them will present. Any conceivable jury will be highly unimpressed with this cast of characters.
Would you take the word of Otis Gains, who, a police source says, turned state's evidence only after he was caught with a "pharmacy" of drugs, including heroin? Gains is a guy who was convicted of carjacking someone in 1992 and shooting up the car in the process. The same year, Gains was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison for possession of sale amounts of heroin. When Gains was a juvenile, he was convicted of vehicular homicide.
And then there's Charles Johnson. He's a witness against Temple. He's a killer, too. In October 1981, Johnson and another man walked into a grocery store in Bayview-Hunters Point and shot and killed 35-year-old Jamil Abed, the counterman, during a botched robbery. After two mistrials, the DA allowed Johnson to plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter, for which he received four years in prison.
Andrews drops into an imitation of a possible address to the jury in a trial of Temple: "Ladies and gentlemen you are going to hate everyone you hear from today."
