Edited sentence: "  De La Mata was arrested in 1988; acquitted in 1990; charged again in 1992; and convicted in 1994, and then after a long appellate battle (based on various irregularities in the 1994 trial), most of his convictions were affirmed in 2001.As prominent criminal defense attorney Roy Black has pointed out in a case where both of these things actually occurred, "Fred De La Mata is living proof that the federal government will never let go.Attorney to indict.Attorneys are able to freeze all assets of criminal suspects before trial and can veto a suspect's choice of defense counsel by simply refusing to authorize the unfreezing of assets to pay for the suspect's chosen counsel.Attorneys can and have spent decades pursuing a single suspect to convict him of something, anything.Attorneys enormous new powers during the War on Drugs, which have resulted in the current situation where the only real discretion in the contemporary federal criminal justice system is in the decision by the U.Congress gave U.For example, U.Former plaintiffs' class-action attorney William Lerach summarized the present situation neatly in his published explanation of his 2008 plea bargain:.Furthermore, U.The conviction in most federal criminal cases is a foregone conclusion, which is why so many suspects plead guilty.The government is still attempting to confiscate his frozen assets as of 2008