Leveling the playing field

Moses Lake legal investigator receives elite certification

MOSES LAKE — When he was young, Mike McPheters dreamed — like all boys growing up — of being a fireman, a police officer and a cowboy.

When he got back from a church mission in Uruguay, though, McPheters found his fellow missionaries pursuing careers in the FBI. He talked it over with them and got excited enough to follow suit as a special agent covering violent crimes, organized crime, white collar crime and working on a Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team. McPheters and his fellow missionaries all ended up in Miami, Fla., together.

The job met his boyhood expectations, McPheters said, telling stories of his FBI service which include names like Al Capone and arresting the top suspect in the murder of Jimmy Hoffa.

There were nights when McPheters was on the SWAT team where an arrest would be made the following morning.

"We'd be going into a drug house and kicking in the doors early in the morning, when everybody was asleep, and we'd be taking the drugs off the street and arresting the bad guys," McPheters remembered. "To me, it was like the night before Christmas. Seriously, I loved it."

McPheters also remembered his excitement on the actual team, wearing camouflage and bullet proof vests, carrying high-powered military weapons and bearing face paint.

"We'd look at each other and man, we'd be so jazzed and charged up," he said. "Boy, when we hit those doors, we'd get so excited we'd kick those doors in. Sometimes, it was a lot more fun when the whole doorjam went in."

When McPheters retired from the FBI, he was looking for work on a community college teaching level. His daughter's husband was an instructor at Big Bend Community College, and advised her father to apply, where he taught police science, criminal law and conversational Spanish for several years.

McPheters then worked as a certified translator, ultimately doing some work for superior court on a provisional basis, before getting the ol' investigative itch again, starting work as a legal investigator in around 2000.

Today, Basin Investigations has an office manager, a contract typist and three other investigators in addition to McPheters. The office contracts for Grant County's defense team on criminal defense investigations, with other work including personal injury investigations, investigations of corporate fraud and corporate espionage, and looking for missing people. The agency doesn't work divorce cases or follow someone around, he added.

"Almost as interesting as being in the FBI, and sometimes more so," McPheters said.

McPheters said the agency does a high volume of work for the county.

"I usually use the term legal investigation rather than private investigation, but I suppose it's about the same thing," he said, noting Basin Investigations' work is legally-oriented, working with attorneys.

Working with the FBI, McPheters primarily worked for the prosecution, but now he works for the defense, he noted.

"It's interesting to me, and very enlightening, to see both sides of it," he said. "I always thought in the FBI that everybody was guilty, and I'm confident everybody I ever arrested was guilty."

McPheters had the luxury of making their FBI case before ever making an arrest, he said, to the point where they could go to court the day after making an arrest. Police work differs in that sometimes they must make an arrest on very short notice, he said, stressing that both the prosecution and defense play important roles. Sometimes, to no fault but the lack of time involved, those cases need to be investigated by the defense to make sure everything is equal, he added.

"What we try to do is even the playing field," he said. "Perhaps in some cases defendants have charges stacked against them that aren't necessarily right. Sometimes defendants in some cases are innocent, and we've proven that. But most often, what we find is that we level the playing field and our investigation usually results in defendants having charges dismissed against them that perhaps should never have been filed."

The agency works objectively, McPheters said, not caring about the outcome, but ensuring defendants and those prosecuting them get "a fair shake."

In August, McPheters earned the Certified Legal Investigator (CLI) designation at the National Association of Legal Investigators, or NALI, annual convention in Portland, Ore. The CLI designation is only conferred to those experienced legal investigators who pass stringent oral and written examinations, and author a paper graded and subsequently published in national investigative trade publication. There are 121 CLIs in the world.

"It was another milestone in my career as an investigator, because I really respect the tenets and principles of this organization," McPheters said of NALI. "I had to study hard to achieve it, which made it all the gratifying."