When Kenneth Trentadue's body arrived at a funeral home in California, family members were stunned to find the body bloody and covered in bruises. To them, this did not appear to be a simple suicide. It looked as if Kenneth Trentadue had been beaten severely. The government had also conducted an autopsy on the body without telling family members.

In August 1997, the family filed a wrongful death suit in federal court in Oklahoma. Trentadue also pursued legal action to obtain documents to support his claims of torture.

In the suit, the family brought forward allegations that federal agents fabricated evidence of Kenneth's death, threatened witnesses, bribed witnesses, intimidated family members and balked at giving any information about the cause of death.

During a bench trial in 2001, a federal judge found the conspiracy allegations could not be proven but ruled federal agents did intentionally inflict emotional distress by failing to tell the family about the condition of the body.

The government appealed to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver. After bouncing back twice on appeal, the district judge last week issued another opinion, ordering the government to pay about $1 million in damages to the Trentadue family.

Trentadue said there is no way he can compel the government to pay up, despite countless hours spent over 13 years to fight the government in court. The reason is the law precludes citizens from filing liens or writs of execution against government entities. The law is devised to prevent citizens from bleeding governments of funds.

Meanwhile, Trentadue continues to fight the government on several Freedom of Information cases: one to access a government investigation into his brother's death and a second suit to find out the government's basis for trying to indict Trentadue twice. So far, the government has fought handing over the documents, despite several district and appellate court rulings ordering the information's release.

In a recent case, the government handed over the investigation report to Trentadue completely blacked out. Judges with the 10th Circuit Court were not amused. In oral arguments held last year, appellate judges criticized the government for even redacting information that was clearly public record and said there was evidence that agents were responsible for "serious acts of misconduct."

The government stalled handing over the documents last fall, saying it planned to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court only to later abandon that effort. Now, the federal court has ordered the government to turn over the documents by April 10.

Trentadue said the effort to hide information from him comes from the top ranks of the Justice Department, who not only want to cover up information about his brother's death but possible prior knowledge that the FBI may have had about the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building that killed 168 adults and children.

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E-mail: gfattah@desnews.com