Source: Daily KOS
by Andrew Krieg
August 7, 2009
Netroots Nation hosts an unprecedented forum on Aug. 15 in Pittsburgh to help journalists learn how Bush administration prosecutors altered the U.S. political map by corruption investigations of Democrats, who were targeted by at least 5:1 ratios.
Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman and former Pennsylvania Allegheny County Coroner Dr. Cyril Wecht will show how "selective prosecution" unfairly ruined careers and poses an ongoing threat to our legal system.
The forum is, "Reporting DoJ Misconduct Scandals: Why Netroots Remains Last Hope for Justice." The title reflects largely failed oversight by courts, Congress and traditional media – and the breakthrough reporting opportunity right now for others, based on major recent revelations.
I’m Andrew Kreig, a journalist/attorney who is moderating the forum after researching the public impact of DoJ's mid-term dismissals of nine U.S. attorneys in 2006. White House political advisor Karl Rove helped remove them, including seven on one day. Congressional hearings documented how so-called "Loyal Bushies" tried get rid of law enforcers who refrained from political hit jobs, such as pre-election indictments to affect an election.
Click here for rest of story and poll.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Langford, Blount, LaPierre lawyers seek to delay fraud trial
Lawyers for Langford, others want time to review
Source: The Birmingham News
by Jeremy Gray, News staff writer
July 21, 2009
Attorneys for Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford, Montgomery investment banker Bill Blount and lobbyist Al LaPierre are seeking to delay their trial on charges of mail fraud, bribery, money laundering and conspiracy until November.
In a request filed in federal court in Birmingham on Wednesday, attorneys Tom Baddley, Tommy Spina and Robert Joe McLean argue that a continuance granted in March that delayed the trial from May 4 until Aug. 31 did not give them enough time to review evidence.
On May 28, prosecutors gave the attorneys 500 gigabytes of information pertaining to the case, the attorneys wrote in their continuance request. However, prosecutors told defense attorneys the information was not evidentiary and not pertinent to the case.
Defense attorneys argue they need more time to review the material, and compared the situation to the prosecution of former Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, suggesting prosecutors intended "to bury the defendants in irrelevant material while fighting them on relevant material."
Attorneys for the three also offered these reasons for the delay:
Other recent corruption trials in Jefferson County "have changed the atmosphere in which this case will be tried" and the defense needs more time to prepare, they wrote.
Citing the economic downturn and "the effects of the indictment," they wrote that the defendants do not have "the finances necessary to provide an adequate defense."
McLean, an attorney for LaPierre, said Monday that U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Greene has not ruled on the request.
In a response filed Thursday, Acting U.S. Attorney James Phillips wrote that prosecutors have turned over all evidence to the defense.
"The United States has fulfilled its obligations and will continue to do so," Phillips wrote.
E-mail: jgray@bhamnews.com
Source: The Birmingham News
by Jeremy Gray, News staff writer
July 21, 2009
Attorneys for Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford, Montgomery investment banker Bill Blount and lobbyist Al LaPierre are seeking to delay their trial on charges of mail fraud, bribery, money laundering and conspiracy until November.
In a request filed in federal court in Birmingham on Wednesday, attorneys Tom Baddley, Tommy Spina and Robert Joe McLean argue that a continuance granted in March that delayed the trial from May 4 until Aug. 31 did not give them enough time to review evidence.
On May 28, prosecutors gave the attorneys 500 gigabytes of information pertaining to the case, the attorneys wrote in their continuance request. However, prosecutors told defense attorneys the information was not evidentiary and not pertinent to the case.
Defense attorneys argue they need more time to review the material, and compared the situation to the prosecution of former Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, suggesting prosecutors intended "to bury the defendants in irrelevant material while fighting them on relevant material."
Attorneys for the three also offered these reasons for the delay:
Other recent corruption trials in Jefferson County "have changed the atmosphere in which this case will be tried" and the defense needs more time to prepare, they wrote.
Citing the economic downturn and "the effects of the indictment," they wrote that the defendants do not have "the finances necessary to provide an adequate defense."
McLean, an attorney for LaPierre, said Monday that U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Greene has not ruled on the request.
In a response filed Thursday, Acting U.S. Attorney James Phillips wrote that prosecutors have turned over all evidence to the defense.
"The United States has fulfilled its obligations and will continue to do so," Phillips wrote.
E-mail: jgray@bhamnews.com
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
FOIA Requests Sent to US Attorney's Office
The Citizens for Equality organization has decided to take drastic steps to seek accountability on the part of the Government and the media in their pursuit of Jefferson County officials and their associates. Linked below are two Freedom of Information requests sent to the US Attorney's office in Birmingham and the FBI. Citizens for Equality believe that the information sought in these requests will shed light upon the highly conspicuous relationship between the US Attorneys office in Birmingham and various media outlets. The organization contends that their actions have resulted in an impediment to the guarantee of due process in the Northern District US Attorneys office.
FBI FOIA Request
Northern District of Alabama FOIA Request
FBI FOIA Request
Northern District of Alabama FOIA Request
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
ABA compares DOJ Disciplinary Agency to a Roach Motel
As the DOJ’s disciplinary agency all but disappears, judges take matters into their own hands
Source: ABA Journal
July 2009 Issue
By John Gibeau
The government’s evidence linking reputed mob figures Vincent “the Animal” Ferrara and Pasquale “Patsy” Barone to a 1985 murder was pretty thin—an accomplice who escaped prosecution in exchange for testimony against the pair.
But a little over a year after the 1990 racketeering indictments of Ferrara, Barone and six other members of New England’s Patriarca crime family, a federal prosecutor in Boston learned his putative star witness had recanted.
Yet the prosecutor never told defense about the recantation, which he and a detective recorded in writing. Indeed, the defendants didn’t learn of the memos until 2003, when the detective spilled the beans at a hearing on habeas corpus petitions they filed seeking their release from long prison sentences.
Ultimately both went free, Barone in 2003 from a life sentence and Fer rara in ’05 from a 22-year term. Chief U.S. District Judge Mark L. Wolf, who had imposed both sentences, was forced to cut them short.
The prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Auerhahn, was investigated by Massachusetts state bar authorities. Wolf dropped a dime on him after learning that Auerhahn’s boss had simply reprimanded him be hind closed doors. That just wasn’t good enough for Wolf, considering he had to release two defendants re garded as especially dangerous. Auerhahn still works at the U.S. attor ney’s office in Boston, pros ecuting terrorism cases.
But, going where few judges would, Wolf also penned an extraordi nary series of letters—first to Attor ney General Alberto R. Gonzales and then to his successor, Michael B. Mukasey—stating his case for stiffer punishment and voicing his frustration with the Justice Department’s secretive Office of Professional Re spon sibility, which is supposed to investigate complaints of mis con duct by prosecutors and law enforcement officials who work for the department.
“The department’s performance in the Auerhahn matter raises serious questions about whether judges should continue to rely upon the department to investigate and sanction misconduct by federal prosecutors,” Wolf wrote in a January 2008 letter to Mukasey.
Wolf, appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1985, warned Mukasey that more jurists would begin punishing prosecutors behaving badly if the OPR didn’t.
“I anticipate this will become much more common unless the department’s performance in disciplinary matters improves significantly,” the judge cautioned.
Wolf’s stinging rebuke came not only from a veteran jurist, but from someone who as a young prosecutor helped set in motion the department’s disciplinary machinery in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal.
“As one who took pride in assisting Attorney General Edward Levi in establishing OPR more than 30 years ago,” Wolf told Mukasey, “I sadly doubt it is now capable of serving its intended purpose.”
Critics historically have regarded the OPR as inept at policing its own. Wolf’s exchanges with the attorney general also come amid calls for more transparency.
“I used to call it the Roach Motel of the Justice Department,” says Fordham University law professor Bruce A. Green, a former federal prosecutor and ethics committee co-chair for the ABA Criminal Justice Section. “Cases check in, but they don’t check out.”
The Justice Department established the OPR in December 1975 to investigate allegations of pro fes sional misconduct made against DOJ at torneys and, under certain circumstances, law enforcement personnel, including agents of the Fed eral Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration.
At the DOJ’s request, the section council deferred action in April on a resolution calling on Justice to disclose OPR findings in which it has documented intentional or otherwise serious misconduct. The move gave Justice more time to determine the extent to which a new Free dom of Infor ma tion Act policy presuming disclosure applies to the OPR.
The ABA had wanted the OPR to return to a Clinton-era policy favoring release when probes found inten tion al or serious misconduct, while weigh ing concerns for personal privacy and ongoing investigations.
Under the Bush administration, probes of misconduct often went undisclosed because of the poten tial for personal embarrassment. Upon taking office, President Barack Obama admonished all federal agencies that such personal or political considerations shouldn’t weigh against the public interest. Probes should not be withheld just because they might cause discomfort.
“These people should be embarrassed,” Green says.
Read Full Article...
Source: ABA Journal
July 2009 Issue
By John Gibeau
The government’s evidence linking reputed mob figures Vincent “the Animal” Ferrara and Pasquale “Patsy” Barone to a 1985 murder was pretty thin—an accomplice who escaped prosecution in exchange for testimony against the pair.
But a little over a year after the 1990 racketeering indictments of Ferrara, Barone and six other members of New England’s Patriarca crime family, a federal prosecutor in Boston learned his putative star witness had recanted.
Yet the prosecutor never told defense about the recantation, which he and a detective recorded in writing. Indeed, the defendants didn’t learn of the memos until 2003, when the detective spilled the beans at a hearing on habeas corpus petitions they filed seeking their release from long prison sentences.
Ultimately both went free, Barone in 2003 from a life sentence and Fer rara in ’05 from a 22-year term. Chief U.S. District Judge Mark L. Wolf, who had imposed both sentences, was forced to cut them short.
The prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Auerhahn, was investigated by Massachusetts state bar authorities. Wolf dropped a dime on him after learning that Auerhahn’s boss had simply reprimanded him be hind closed doors. That just wasn’t good enough for Wolf, considering he had to release two defendants re garded as especially dangerous. Auerhahn still works at the U.S. attor ney’s office in Boston, pros ecuting terrorism cases.
But, going where few judges would, Wolf also penned an extraordi nary series of letters—first to Attor ney General Alberto R. Gonzales and then to his successor, Michael B. Mukasey—stating his case for stiffer punishment and voicing his frustration with the Justice Department’s secretive Office of Professional Re spon sibility, which is supposed to investigate complaints of mis con duct by prosecutors and law enforcement officials who work for the department.
“The department’s performance in the Auerhahn matter raises serious questions about whether judges should continue to rely upon the department to investigate and sanction misconduct by federal prosecutors,” Wolf wrote in a January 2008 letter to Mukasey.
Wolf, appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1985, warned Mukasey that more jurists would begin punishing prosecutors behaving badly if the OPR didn’t.
“I anticipate this will become much more common unless the department’s performance in disciplinary matters improves significantly,” the judge cautioned.
Wolf’s stinging rebuke came not only from a veteran jurist, but from someone who as a young prosecutor helped set in motion the department’s disciplinary machinery in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal.
“As one who took pride in assisting Attorney General Edward Levi in establishing OPR more than 30 years ago,” Wolf told Mukasey, “I sadly doubt it is now capable of serving its intended purpose.”
Critics historically have regarded the OPR as inept at policing its own. Wolf’s exchanges with the attorney general also come amid calls for more transparency.
“I used to call it the Roach Motel of the Justice Department,” says Fordham University law professor Bruce A. Green, a former federal prosecutor and ethics committee co-chair for the ABA Criminal Justice Section. “Cases check in, but they don’t check out.”
The Justice Department established the OPR in December 1975 to investigate allegations of pro fes sional misconduct made against DOJ at torneys and, under certain circumstances, law enforcement personnel, including agents of the Fed eral Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration.
At the DOJ’s request, the section council deferred action in April on a resolution calling on Justice to disclose OPR findings in which it has documented intentional or otherwise serious misconduct. The move gave Justice more time to determine the extent to which a new Free dom of Infor ma tion Act policy presuming disclosure applies to the OPR.
The ABA had wanted the OPR to return to a Clinton-era policy favoring release when probes found inten tion al or serious misconduct, while weigh ing concerns for personal privacy and ongoing investigations.
Under the Bush administration, probes of misconduct often went undisclosed because of the poten tial for personal embarrassment. Upon taking office, President Barack Obama admonished all federal agencies that such personal or political considerations shouldn’t weigh against the public interest. Probes should not be withheld just because they might cause discomfort.
“These people should be embarrassed,” Green says.
Read Full Article...
Letter to The Honorable John Conyers
Re. Misconduct in US Attorney's Office in AL
The Honorable John Conyers, Chairman
House Committee on the Judiciary
2138 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Mr. Chairman:
I am writing to bring a very troubling matter to your attention regarding the actions of United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Alabama.
As a result of an investigation into possible corruption in Jefferson County, Alabama, the US Attorney’s office recently indicted and arrested Birmingham, Alabama Mayor Larry Langford; former Chairman of the Alabama Democratic Party William Blount; and former Executive Director of the Alabama Democratic Party Al LaPierre.
Mayor Langford's attorney sent letters to the prosecutors in April and May of 2008 making it clear that if Mayor Langford was in fact indicted, he would voluntarily surrender at a time and place of the US Attorney’s choosing. Mr. Langford was indicted on Monday, December 1 and arrested at his place of employment. The event was only prevented from being a media spectacle by the actions of Birmingham police officers who were serving as Mayor Langford's security detail. These officers interceded with Federal officials, keeping the event from turning into a media circus.
Mr. Blount and Mr. Lapierre voluntarily surrendered only to be arraigned with Mayor Langford in court with all three men forced to appear in shackles. When confronted by the media about the different manner the three defendants were detained, the U.S. Attorney's office said that all three were to be arrested, however no documents were produced to prove this nor to explain the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s inability to locate the two other men even though the FBI had their home addresses and their business addresses.
It is obvious these extreme measures were absolutely unnecessary and show a troubling desire on the part of the U.S. Attorney’s office to maximize the embarrassment and media exposure of its targets. Sadly, this latest spectacle is only the latest example of this office’s unprofessional and irresponsible behavior.
As you know, as a result of your committee's investigation and report in 2007, the U.S. Attorney, Mrs. Alice Martin, was referred by your committee to the Office of Professional Responsibility for investigation due to the office’s actions in the case of Don Siegelman.
The U.S. Attorney’s office indicted Governor Siegelman in 2004 in a case that was dropped for lack of evidence. In that case, Federal Judge U. W. Clemons scrutinized the prosecutions case, and ruled that there was a lack of prima facie evidence to proceed after the prosecution could not produce the witnesses that it had represented to the Court would prove their case.
In that case, Assistant, US Attorney Matt Hart, who is the lead prosecutor on the Langford case, was reprimanded from the bench after attempting to proffer knowingly false testimony from a witness and for leaking information to friendly media outlets even though the Judge had required the documents to be filed under seal.
Doug Jones, former U. S. Attorney for the Northern District, testified before your committee on October 23, 2007, that Matt Hart, then a Alabama Assistant Attorney General, told Doug Jones’s staff that he hoped the Bobo investigation would go to the highest levels of the Siegelman administration. Matt Horn was the Assistant U. S. Attorney in Birmingham that handled the 2004 case that he "hoped" the investigation, that at that time did not involve Don Siegelman, would "lead to Siegelman". Mr. Hart's comment implied that the U. S. Attorney’s office was targeting an individual and not prosecuting crime.
Subsequently, Mr. Hart was referred to the Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility for investigation. OPR has not disclosed if there was an investigation or the results of that investigation, but Matt Hart continues to oversee investigations. He is on the Langford prosecution team.
The egregious behavior of this office continued into early 2007 as it was investigating corruption of the Alabama two year college system.
The Governor of Alabama, Bob Riley, announced that he would be aiding the Alabama Republican Party in raising 40 million dollars with the sole goal of winning control of the Alabama legislature. Within forty eight hours of Riley's pronouncement, The U.S. Attorney’s office leaked to the Birmingham News that its investigation into the Alabama two year college system would now include members of the Alabama Legislature.
Following through with the U.S. Attorney’s office pledge to widen its probe to include members of the Alabama legislature the office began targeting the Democratic members of the Alabama Legislature. In violation of state law regarding legal service on members of the legislature, the US Attorney attempted to serve subpoenas on 14 members of the Alabama legislature while their respective bodies were in session even to the point of attempting to have them served on the floor of the legislature. Of the 14 representatives subpoenaed, all were Democrats except two who were widely known to not tow the Republican party line and not in the good graces of Governor Riley. Though it has never been proven there seemed to be more than average media attendance to the legislative session on that day.
The Langford investigation centers on actions taken by members of the Jefferson County Commission from 2003 through 2007. One of those commissioners, Gary White was indicted in May, 2008. White was also a witness in the Siegelman case and played a role in introducing Richard Scrushy to Don Siegelman. According to an affidavit filed by Whites wife, an FBI agent wanted White to change his testimony about that meeting in order to be more damaging to Siegelman at Siegelman's sentencing hearing. After refusing, White reportedly was reminded by the agent that he continued to have this other investigation to be concerned about. White's wife states that her husband told the agent that he would not change his testimony and was not concerned about what would occur in the Jefferson County investigation. A few months later, Gary White was indicted by Alice Martin.
The only member of the commission who has not been indicted, Bettye Fine Collins, is a woman who is a member of the Republican National Committee and serves as Chair of the National Organization of Republican Women. She testified under oath that she took money from John Katopodis, who was receiving funding from the County at the same time she was voting on Mr. Katopodis’ organization funding. The irony is that Commissioner Gary White was indicted for similar actions.
Aside from what I feel is an abundance of evidence that this U.S. Attorney’s office selectively prosecutes individuals with whom it’s employees disagrees politically, it also has a history of gross incompetence and professional negligence.
The most blinding of which is the case of Alex Latifi and his company Axion. Martin targeted Latifi for prosecution and in the process, sought to destroy this man's business and his life, knowing full well that the "facts" they were asserting to the jury and to the judge were in fact NOT TRUE.
The U.S. Attorney’s office sought to destroy this man - not to prosecute a crime. Not only was Mr. Latifi acquitted, but the injustice dealt him was deemed so outrageous by a federal judge, that the case was thrown out, and the judge ordered US Attorney Alice Martin to pay all court costs and all expenses the defendant had to pay in order to prepare his defense.
Mr. Chairman, there is no justification whatsoever for this U. S. Attorney’s office - which is under investigation for professional misconduct, who has knowingly targeted individuals for political purposes, and who knowingly prosecuted an innocent man - to be allowed to remain involved in the Langford case.
Since the American Bar Association’s article “Roach Motel” has stated the DOJ's disciplinary agency has all but disappeared, it is more important that Congress continues to hold the Department of Justice accountable for its employees’ misconduct. The question has to be asked if the Department of Justice is bold enough to engage in misconduct in these types of high profile cases what are they doing in the cases involving ordinary citizens that do not have the money or the resources to combat the power of the Government?
Sincerely,
Tracie Allen
House Committee on the Judiciary
2138 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Mr. Chairman:
I am writing to bring a very troubling matter to your attention regarding the actions of United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Alabama.
As a result of an investigation into possible corruption in Jefferson County, Alabama, the US Attorney’s office recently indicted and arrested Birmingham, Alabama Mayor Larry Langford; former Chairman of the Alabama Democratic Party William Blount; and former Executive Director of the Alabama Democratic Party Al LaPierre.
Mayor Langford's attorney sent letters to the prosecutors in April and May of 2008 making it clear that if Mayor Langford was in fact indicted, he would voluntarily surrender at a time and place of the US Attorney’s choosing. Mr. Langford was indicted on Monday, December 1 and arrested at his place of employment. The event was only prevented from being a media spectacle by the actions of Birmingham police officers who were serving as Mayor Langford's security detail. These officers interceded with Federal officials, keeping the event from turning into a media circus.
Mr. Blount and Mr. Lapierre voluntarily surrendered only to be arraigned with Mayor Langford in court with all three men forced to appear in shackles. When confronted by the media about the different manner the three defendants were detained, the U.S. Attorney's office said that all three were to be arrested, however no documents were produced to prove this nor to explain the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s inability to locate the two other men even though the FBI had their home addresses and their business addresses.
It is obvious these extreme measures were absolutely unnecessary and show a troubling desire on the part of the U.S. Attorney’s office to maximize the embarrassment and media exposure of its targets. Sadly, this latest spectacle is only the latest example of this office’s unprofessional and irresponsible behavior.
As you know, as a result of your committee's investigation and report in 2007, the U.S. Attorney, Mrs. Alice Martin, was referred by your committee to the Office of Professional Responsibility for investigation due to the office’s actions in the case of Don Siegelman.
The U.S. Attorney’s office indicted Governor Siegelman in 2004 in a case that was dropped for lack of evidence. In that case, Federal Judge U. W. Clemons scrutinized the prosecutions case, and ruled that there was a lack of prima facie evidence to proceed after the prosecution could not produce the witnesses that it had represented to the Court would prove their case.
In that case, Assistant, US Attorney Matt Hart, who is the lead prosecutor on the Langford case, was reprimanded from the bench after attempting to proffer knowingly false testimony from a witness and for leaking information to friendly media outlets even though the Judge had required the documents to be filed under seal.
Doug Jones, former U. S. Attorney for the Northern District, testified before your committee on October 23, 2007, that Matt Hart, then a Alabama Assistant Attorney General, told Doug Jones’s staff that he hoped the Bobo investigation would go to the highest levels of the Siegelman administration. Matt Horn was the Assistant U. S. Attorney in Birmingham that handled the 2004 case that he "hoped" the investigation, that at that time did not involve Don Siegelman, would "lead to Siegelman". Mr. Hart's comment implied that the U. S. Attorney’s office was targeting an individual and not prosecuting crime.
Subsequently, Mr. Hart was referred to the Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility for investigation. OPR has not disclosed if there was an investigation or the results of that investigation, but Matt Hart continues to oversee investigations. He is on the Langford prosecution team.
The egregious behavior of this office continued into early 2007 as it was investigating corruption of the Alabama two year college system.
The Governor of Alabama, Bob Riley, announced that he would be aiding the Alabama Republican Party in raising 40 million dollars with the sole goal of winning control of the Alabama legislature. Within forty eight hours of Riley's pronouncement, The U.S. Attorney’s office leaked to the Birmingham News that its investigation into the Alabama two year college system would now include members of the Alabama Legislature.
Following through with the U.S. Attorney’s office pledge to widen its probe to include members of the Alabama legislature the office began targeting the Democratic members of the Alabama Legislature. In violation of state law regarding legal service on members of the legislature, the US Attorney attempted to serve subpoenas on 14 members of the Alabama legislature while their respective bodies were in session even to the point of attempting to have them served on the floor of the legislature. Of the 14 representatives subpoenaed, all were Democrats except two who were widely known to not tow the Republican party line and not in the good graces of Governor Riley. Though it has never been proven there seemed to be more than average media attendance to the legislative session on that day.
The Langford investigation centers on actions taken by members of the Jefferson County Commission from 2003 through 2007. One of those commissioners, Gary White was indicted in May, 2008. White was also a witness in the Siegelman case and played a role in introducing Richard Scrushy to Don Siegelman. According to an affidavit filed by Whites wife, an FBI agent wanted White to change his testimony about that meeting in order to be more damaging to Siegelman at Siegelman's sentencing hearing. After refusing, White reportedly was reminded by the agent that he continued to have this other investigation to be concerned about. White's wife states that her husband told the agent that he would not change his testimony and was not concerned about what would occur in the Jefferson County investigation. A few months later, Gary White was indicted by Alice Martin.
The only member of the commission who has not been indicted, Bettye Fine Collins, is a woman who is a member of the Republican National Committee and serves as Chair of the National Organization of Republican Women. She testified under oath that she took money from John Katopodis, who was receiving funding from the County at the same time she was voting on Mr. Katopodis’ organization funding. The irony is that Commissioner Gary White was indicted for similar actions.
Aside from what I feel is an abundance of evidence that this U.S. Attorney’s office selectively prosecutes individuals with whom it’s employees disagrees politically, it also has a history of gross incompetence and professional negligence.
The most blinding of which is the case of Alex Latifi and his company Axion. Martin targeted Latifi for prosecution and in the process, sought to destroy this man's business and his life, knowing full well that the "facts" they were asserting to the jury and to the judge were in fact NOT TRUE.
The U.S. Attorney’s office sought to destroy this man - not to prosecute a crime. Not only was Mr. Latifi acquitted, but the injustice dealt him was deemed so outrageous by a federal judge, that the case was thrown out, and the judge ordered US Attorney Alice Martin to pay all court costs and all expenses the defendant had to pay in order to prepare his defense.
Mr. Chairman, there is no justification whatsoever for this U. S. Attorney’s office - which is under investigation for professional misconduct, who has knowingly targeted individuals for political purposes, and who knowingly prosecuted an innocent man - to be allowed to remain involved in the Langford case.
Since the American Bar Association’s article “Roach Motel” has stated the DOJ's disciplinary agency has all but disappeared, it is more important that Congress continues to hold the Department of Justice accountable for its employees’ misconduct. The question has to be asked if the Department of Justice is bold enough to engage in misconduct in these types of high profile cases what are they doing in the cases involving ordinary citizens that do not have the money or the resources to combat the power of the Government?
Sincerely,
Tracie Allen
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Justice Dept. Whistle-Blower in Alabama Case Is Fired
Source: The New York Times
By John Schwartz
July 9, 2009
A Department of Justice whistle-blower who accused prosecutors of misconduct in the closely watched federal corruption trial of former Gov. Donald E. Siegelman of Alabama has been fired, and claims retaliation is the reason. The government denies that it was retaliating.
The whistle-blower, Tamarah T. Grimes, worked as a legal aide with the team prosecuting Mr. Siegelman and Richard M. Scrushy, the former chairman of HealthSouth, on bribery and corruption charges.
Both men were convicted in 2006 in a case that Mr. Siegelman, a Democrat, and supporters say was politically motivated.
Ms. Grimes filed her complaints in 2007 under whistle-blower protection laws, accusing prosecutors of several misdeeds. Included were improper communications with jurors and the continuing involvement of the United States attorney for Alabama, Leura G. Canary, long after Ms. Canary, a Republican, said she had removed herself from the case because of partisan ties.
Ms. Grimes received word of her firing on June 9 from the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, according to a statement she issued.
In her statement, Ms. Grimes called the firing, which was first reported on a Harper’s Magazine blog, “the price for opposition.”
On June 1, she had sent a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. that laid out her concerns in the case; that letter was included by the legal team for Mr. Siegelman in filings seeking a new trial.
A spokeswoman for the Justice Department, Tracy Schmaler, said Ms. Grimes’s firing had no connection to the misconduct claims.
“The department takes seriously its obligation under the whistle-blower law and did not violate it with regards to the termination of this employee,” Ms. Schmaler said, declining to offer further comment “for privacy reasons” in a personnel matter.
The department investigated Ms. Grimes’s accusations, and in its report last October said the Alabama prosecutors had not “violated any law, rule or regulation” or engaged in mismanagement. The report said the evidence “strongly supports” the positions taken by management in the dispute.
The House Judiciary Committee, however, released a report the next month criticizing the Justice Department report as incomplete and “one-sided.”
Ms. Grimes had been on administrative leave for much of the previous year.
By John Schwartz
July 9, 2009
A Department of Justice whistle-blower who accused prosecutors of misconduct in the closely watched federal corruption trial of former Gov. Donald E. Siegelman of Alabama has been fired, and claims retaliation is the reason. The government denies that it was retaliating.
The whistle-blower, Tamarah T. Grimes, worked as a legal aide with the team prosecuting Mr. Siegelman and Richard M. Scrushy, the former chairman of HealthSouth, on bribery and corruption charges.
Both men were convicted in 2006 in a case that Mr. Siegelman, a Democrat, and supporters say was politically motivated.
Ms. Grimes filed her complaints in 2007 under whistle-blower protection laws, accusing prosecutors of several misdeeds. Included were improper communications with jurors and the continuing involvement of the United States attorney for Alabama, Leura G. Canary, long after Ms. Canary, a Republican, said she had removed herself from the case because of partisan ties.
Ms. Grimes received word of her firing on June 9 from the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, according to a statement she issued.
In her statement, Ms. Grimes called the firing, which was first reported on a Harper’s Magazine blog, “the price for opposition.”
On June 1, she had sent a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. that laid out her concerns in the case; that letter was included by the legal team for Mr. Siegelman in filings seeking a new trial.
A spokeswoman for the Justice Department, Tracy Schmaler, said Ms. Grimes’s firing had no connection to the misconduct claims.
“The department takes seriously its obligation under the whistle-blower law and did not violate it with regards to the termination of this employee,” Ms. Schmaler said, declining to offer further comment “for privacy reasons” in a personnel matter.
The department investigated Ms. Grimes’s accusations, and in its report last October said the Alabama prosecutors had not “violated any law, rule or regulation” or engaged in mismanagement. The report said the evidence “strongly supports” the positions taken by management in the dispute.
The House Judiciary Committee, however, released a report the next month criticizing the Justice Department report as incomplete and “one-sided.”
Ms. Grimes had been on administrative leave for much of the previous year.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Federal Judge Spotlights Misconduct by Federal Prosecutors in Siegelman Case
Source: Harper's Magazine
By Scott Horton
May 22, 2009
U.W. Clemon, formerly Alabama’s most senior federal judge, has written a scorching letter to Attorney General Eric Holder itemizing gross misconduct by federal prosecutors involved in the Siegelman case and demanding that the Justice Department open a full investigation into the matter. “The 2004 prosecution of Mr. Siegelman in the Northern District of Alabama was the most unfounded criminal case over which I presided in my entire judicial career,” he writes. “In my judgment, his prosecution was completely without legal merit; and it could not have been accomplished without the approval of the Department of Justice.” Clemon goes on to note that prosecutors engaged in judicial forum shopping, attempted to poison the jury pool, and filed and pressed bogus charges.
Holder has declined to release the full text of the letter, but it was quoted at length in an article by attorney-journalist Andrew Krieg at the Huffington Post. Clemon, who retired from the bench at the beginning of the year in order to return to the practice of law, issued the letter more than a year after handing down a decision in United States v. White, which I discussed in “Corruption in a U.S. Attorney’s Office.” Judge Clemon found “disturbing evidence” suggesting that prosecutors had attempted inappropriately to pressure a witness to give false evidence against Siegelman. Notwithstanding these startling conclusions, documented in a published court opinion,it appears that the Justice Department took no steps to investigate the allegations of serious misconduct.
In recent weeks, a panel of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed five of seven counts of the Siegelman conviction in an opinion issued by three Republican judges. The case was referred back to a fourth Republican judge, Mark E. Fuller, for re-sentencing. The ruling prompted further cries for a reexamination of the case, as 75 former attorneys general from 40 states, both Democrats and Republicans, wrote Holder noting gross irregularities in the case and improper conduct by prosecutors who secured the conviction.
In the last week, a number of serious allegations have resurfaced concerning Judge Fuller, who came to preside over the criminal charges against Siegelman following a series of unusual maneuvers by federal prosecutors highlighted in Clemon’s letter to Holder. The Siegelman case came into Fuller’s court just as a series of hard-hitting accusations of judicial misconduct were filed with the Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section (“PIN”). PIN, whose leaders are now themselves the targets of a special prosecutor’s investigation, led the prosecution of the Siegelman case. In the last week, Missouri attorney Paul Benton Weeks, whose affidavit making charges against Fuller was first secured and published here, has spoken publicly about the matter for the first time and has provided considerable further detail to his accusations. Weeks stated:
I just wish I had known about Siegelman’s case before his trial so they [defendants and attorneys] could have been able to understand the kind of animus Fuller has to have for Siegelman. I guarantee that Fuller blames Siegelman for my affidavit. If you look at how Fuller treated Siegelman, he clearly hates him.
What’s remarkable is that Siegelman has never been given a real chance to show why it’s not appropriate for Fuller to be his judge. The material I produced was never available. I think it was put into a separate file to keep it hidden.
Following the court of appeals decision to strike two of the seven counts on which Siegelman was convicted, the federal prosecutor on the case has suggested that he will seek to increase Siegelman’s sentence from seven to twenty years. Siegelman’s attorneys cite this as further evidence of vindictive motive on the part of the prosecutors. The Obama Justice Department has not yet announced a replacement of the prosecutors involved, and the Bush Justice Department’s team remains in control of the case. Attorney General Holder’s office advised the Huffington Post that notwithstanding the long-standing allegations of prosecutorial misconduct, now amplified by a large group of attorneys general and the state’s former senior federal judge, the Justice Department had no investigation of the accusations underway.
By Scott Horton
May 22, 2009
U.W. Clemon, formerly Alabama’s most senior federal judge, has written a scorching letter to Attorney General Eric Holder itemizing gross misconduct by federal prosecutors involved in the Siegelman case and demanding that the Justice Department open a full investigation into the matter. “The 2004 prosecution of Mr. Siegelman in the Northern District of Alabama was the most unfounded criminal case over which I presided in my entire judicial career,” he writes. “In my judgment, his prosecution was completely without legal merit; and it could not have been accomplished without the approval of the Department of Justice.” Clemon goes on to note that prosecutors engaged in judicial forum shopping, attempted to poison the jury pool, and filed and pressed bogus charges.
Holder has declined to release the full text of the letter, but it was quoted at length in an article by attorney-journalist Andrew Krieg at the Huffington Post. Clemon, who retired from the bench at the beginning of the year in order to return to the practice of law, issued the letter more than a year after handing down a decision in United States v. White, which I discussed in “Corruption in a U.S. Attorney’s Office.” Judge Clemon found “disturbing evidence” suggesting that prosecutors had attempted inappropriately to pressure a witness to give false evidence against Siegelman. Notwithstanding these startling conclusions, documented in a published court opinion,it appears that the Justice Department took no steps to investigate the allegations of serious misconduct.
In recent weeks, a panel of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed five of seven counts of the Siegelman conviction in an opinion issued by three Republican judges. The case was referred back to a fourth Republican judge, Mark E. Fuller, for re-sentencing. The ruling prompted further cries for a reexamination of the case, as 75 former attorneys general from 40 states, both Democrats and Republicans, wrote Holder noting gross irregularities in the case and improper conduct by prosecutors who secured the conviction.
In the last week, a number of serious allegations have resurfaced concerning Judge Fuller, who came to preside over the criminal charges against Siegelman following a series of unusual maneuvers by federal prosecutors highlighted in Clemon’s letter to Holder. The Siegelman case came into Fuller’s court just as a series of hard-hitting accusations of judicial misconduct were filed with the Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section (“PIN”). PIN, whose leaders are now themselves the targets of a special prosecutor’s investigation, led the prosecution of the Siegelman case. In the last week, Missouri attorney Paul Benton Weeks, whose affidavit making charges against Fuller was first secured and published here, has spoken publicly about the matter for the first time and has provided considerable further detail to his accusations. Weeks stated:
I just wish I had known about Siegelman’s case before his trial so they [defendants and attorneys] could have been able to understand the kind of animus Fuller has to have for Siegelman. I guarantee that Fuller blames Siegelman for my affidavit. If you look at how Fuller treated Siegelman, he clearly hates him.
What’s remarkable is that Siegelman has never been given a real chance to show why it’s not appropriate for Fuller to be his judge. The material I produced was never available. I think it was put into a separate file to keep it hidden.
Following the court of appeals decision to strike two of the seven counts on which Siegelman was convicted, the federal prosecutor on the case has suggested that he will seek to increase Siegelman’s sentence from seven to twenty years. Siegelman’s attorneys cite this as further evidence of vindictive motive on the part of the prosecutors. The Obama Justice Department has not yet announced a replacement of the prosecutors involved, and the Bush Justice Department’s team remains in control of the case. Attorney General Holder’s office advised the Huffington Post that notwithstanding the long-standing allegations of prosecutorial misconduct, now amplified by a large group of attorneys general and the state’s former senior federal judge, the Justice Department had no investigation of the accusations underway.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Charles Walker celebrates moral victory,
vows fight
Source: www.wrdw.com
May 22 2009
AUGUSTA,Ga---The Charles Walker camp is celebrating a moral victory. The judge who tried the case is taking a step back on Walker's latest appeal.
"There's an uproar that's coming like nobody has ever seen," said Charles Champ Walker, Jr. "But we knew this from the start."
Charles Walker Jr is talking tough as the judge who sent his father to prison for 10 years backs out of the appeals process.
"This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that there has been political tampering from day one," said Champ Walker.
Judge Dudley Bowen is recusing himself as questions surface dating back 30 years. In 1979, Walker actively opposed Judge Bowen's nomination because the judge was reported to be a member of several private white-only clubs.
"There's no ifs ands or buts about it," said Champ. "They went after him because he was powerful, and they wanted to stop him."
Champ points to an Augusta Chronicle article that says objections to Bowen's membership in five all-white clubs led Bowen to resign from those clubs.
"No reasonable person in their right mind would say that judge Bowen should have sat down as judge and presided over this trial knowing that my father went after him," said Champ.
Judge Bowen is not admitting personal bias in the case. But he is stepping back because his impartiality might be questioned.
"Judge Dudley Bowen recused himself from this hearing because he knew without any equivocation that my father went after him and his nomination in 1979," said Champ. "He should have recused himself from the trial all together. The law says so. He knows it, and the truth will be told."
Judge Bowen signed the order form May 18, 2009. The case has been refereed to the Chief Judge of the Southern District of Georgia. Meanwhile, Walker is filing an ineffective assistant of counsel claim. The whole point is to get his case back in court.
May 22 2009
AUGUSTA,Ga---The Charles Walker camp is celebrating a moral victory. The judge who tried the case is taking a step back on Walker's latest appeal.
"There's an uproar that's coming like nobody has ever seen," said Charles Champ Walker, Jr. "But we knew this from the start."
Charles Walker Jr is talking tough as the judge who sent his father to prison for 10 years backs out of the appeals process.
"This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that there has been political tampering from day one," said Champ Walker.
Judge Dudley Bowen is recusing himself as questions surface dating back 30 years. In 1979, Walker actively opposed Judge Bowen's nomination because the judge was reported to be a member of several private white-only clubs.
"There's no ifs ands or buts about it," said Champ. "They went after him because he was powerful, and they wanted to stop him."
Champ points to an Augusta Chronicle article that says objections to Bowen's membership in five all-white clubs led Bowen to resign from those clubs.
"No reasonable person in their right mind would say that judge Bowen should have sat down as judge and presided over this trial knowing that my father went after him," said Champ.
Judge Bowen is not admitting personal bias in the case. But he is stepping back because his impartiality might be questioned.
"Judge Dudley Bowen recused himself from this hearing because he knew without any equivocation that my father went after him and his nomination in 1979," said Champ. "He should have recused himself from the trial all together. The law says so. He knows it, and the truth will be told."
Judge Bowen signed the order form May 18, 2009. The case has been refereed to the Chief Judge of the Southern District of Georgia. Meanwhile, Walker is filing an ineffective assistant of counsel claim. The whole point is to get his case back in court.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Wecht ruling could end his trial:
Prosecution loses key decision on search warrants
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
By Paula Reed Ward and Sadie Gurman
Friday, May 15, 2009
Nearly 3 1/2 years after it began, the government's criminal prosecution of former Allegheny County Coroner Dr. Cyril H. Wecht was dealt a crippling blow. U.S. District Judge Sean J. McLaughlin yesterday threw out crucial evidence in connection with the fraud and theft case the government has been pursuing against Dr. Wecht. Prosecutors claim Dr. Wecht used his public office for private gain.
"Now is the time to end this and let this man get on with his life," said defense attorney Jerry McDevitt.
The U.S. attorney's office must decide whether to appeal.
Margaret Philbin, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office, said the opinion was being reviewed to determine the appropriate course of action.
"We haven't backed down from the fight from day one and we won't now," Mr. McDevitt said. "They have a decision to make. I hope it's not one that is born out of a desire to retaliate."
No matter that decision, an elated Dr. Wecht said he felt vindicated by the court's ruling.
"I feel a great sense of relief," he said. "It has been a tremendous ordeal. I would not wish this on my worst enemy."
In a 55-page opinion issued late yesterday, Judge McLaughlin dismissed crucial evidence seized during the execution of two search warrants in April 2005.
Judge McLaughlin found that a warrant served at Dr. Wecht's private pathology offices on Penn Avenue, and another used to seize a laptop used by his administrative assistant, failed to follow the Fourth Amendment's requirement that the warrants be specific.
The warrant that was served on Dr. Wecht's business offices called for the seizure of approximately 20 boxes containing private autopsy files. But Judge McLaughlin found that the warrant provided no meaningful guidance to agents executing it to distinguish between valuable evidence and otherwise unimportant files.
Further, he added, that the government had sufficient information that could have allowed for more particularity in the warrant, but didn't include it.
Brad Orsini, the FBI agent leading the investigation, did not incorporate his affidavit of probable cause into the warrants or attach it, but instead kept it under seal, according to the judge.
"The warrant thus facially authorized government agents to rummage through a substantial volume of the defendant's work product and decide for themselves what to take."
Regarding the warrant for the laptop, the judge found that it was too broad and did not support what he called the "en masse" seizure of information and data it contained.
Judge McLaughlin was appointed to the case in October after the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it would benefit from a fresh set of eyes.
In yesterday's opinion, the judge noted the intense public scrutiny given to the case, as well as what he called the "emotionally charged atmosphere," that led to the case taking on "a life of its own."
Judge McLaughlin, who is based in Erie, wrote that he recognizes that "suppression is a harsh remedy," and said that his decision was not undertaken lightly.
Instead, he concluded that his rulings were grounded on "well-established Fourth Amendment principles which serve as a bulwark against unwarranted governmental intrusion into the private affairs of every citizen, not just this defendant.
"The importance of these principles transcends this particular case."
Dr. Wecht was indicted in January 2006 on 84 counts in which the government claimed he used his public office for private gain. On the eve of trial nearly two years later, the government dismissed 43 of those counts.
The case was tried before U.S. District Judge Arthur J. Schwab over several weeks in early 2008 before ending with a hung jury in April of that year.
The government immediately announced it would retry Dr. Wecht, but then the case went to the 3rd Circuit Court on a number of appeals.
Late last summer, the appeals court sent the case back to the district court, but ordered that a new judge be appointed to hear it.
In January, Judge McLaughlin held an entire day of oral arguments, which he then followed with additional arguments in March. In the meantime, the government had further pared the case down to 14 counts, including mail and wire fraud, as well as theft from a program receiving federal funds.
While U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan will make a recommendation whether to appeal, the final say comes from the U.S. solicitor general.
"It's always the case, having nothing to do with the change in the administration, that a government appeal from an adverse decision has to be approved by the Solicitor General," said Harry Litman, former U.S. attorney in Pittsburgh.
The Obama administration asked months ago that all sitting U.S. attorneys remain in place, and Ms. Buchanan has done that. Sen. Robert P. Casey, D-Pa., earlier this week posted an application for potential U.S. attorney candidates on his Web site. Those applications are due June 5.
No matter what, it is extremely unlikely that a new U.S. attorney would be in place before time elapses for an appeal in this case to be filed.
Dick Thornburgh, a former U.S. attorney general who was part of Dr. Wecht's defense team, has said all along that the case never should have been prosecuted.
"It is reassuring to finally find a judge who recognized how flimsy these charges were," he said. "Perhaps Dr. Wecht and his family can now get on with their lives free of the unjustified cloud which has hung over them for far too long."
Dr. Wecht would not say how much money the case has cost him.
"It has wiped me out. If I remain active for 20 more years, there's no way I could begin to recoup what it has cost me financially," he said.
He also added that the public corruption charges carry a "stigma that no one wants." While he said that there is a lot that must be undone, he believes the community supports him.
For his part, Mr. McDevitt said that the case has also damaged the U.S. attorney's office.
"It's not a pretty picture when you stand back and look at the prosecution of Cyril Wecht," he said. "It is a black spot on this district and I hope this ends it."
Paula Reed Ward can be reached at pward@post-gazette.com or 412-263-2620. Sadie Gurman can be reached at sgurman@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1878.
First published on May 15, 2009 at 12:00 am
By Paula Reed Ward and Sadie Gurman
Friday, May 15, 2009
Nearly 3 1/2 years after it began, the government's criminal prosecution of former Allegheny County Coroner Dr. Cyril H. Wecht was dealt a crippling blow. U.S. District Judge Sean J. McLaughlin yesterday threw out crucial evidence in connection with the fraud and theft case the government has been pursuing against Dr. Wecht. Prosecutors claim Dr. Wecht used his public office for private gain.
"Now is the time to end this and let this man get on with his life," said defense attorney Jerry McDevitt.
The U.S. attorney's office must decide whether to appeal.
Margaret Philbin, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office, said the opinion was being reviewed to determine the appropriate course of action.
"We haven't backed down from the fight from day one and we won't now," Mr. McDevitt said. "They have a decision to make. I hope it's not one that is born out of a desire to retaliate."
No matter that decision, an elated Dr. Wecht said he felt vindicated by the court's ruling.
"I feel a great sense of relief," he said. "It has been a tremendous ordeal. I would not wish this on my worst enemy."
In a 55-page opinion issued late yesterday, Judge McLaughlin dismissed crucial evidence seized during the execution of two search warrants in April 2005.
Judge McLaughlin found that a warrant served at Dr. Wecht's private pathology offices on Penn Avenue, and another used to seize a laptop used by his administrative assistant, failed to follow the Fourth Amendment's requirement that the warrants be specific.
The warrant that was served on Dr. Wecht's business offices called for the seizure of approximately 20 boxes containing private autopsy files. But Judge McLaughlin found that the warrant provided no meaningful guidance to agents executing it to distinguish between valuable evidence and otherwise unimportant files.
Further, he added, that the government had sufficient information that could have allowed for more particularity in the warrant, but didn't include it.
Brad Orsini, the FBI agent leading the investigation, did not incorporate his affidavit of probable cause into the warrants or attach it, but instead kept it under seal, according to the judge.
"The warrant thus facially authorized government agents to rummage through a substantial volume of the defendant's work product and decide for themselves what to take."
Regarding the warrant for the laptop, the judge found that it was too broad and did not support what he called the "en masse" seizure of information and data it contained.
Judge McLaughlin was appointed to the case in October after the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it would benefit from a fresh set of eyes.
In yesterday's opinion, the judge noted the intense public scrutiny given to the case, as well as what he called the "emotionally charged atmosphere," that led to the case taking on "a life of its own."
Judge McLaughlin, who is based in Erie, wrote that he recognizes that "suppression is a harsh remedy," and said that his decision was not undertaken lightly.
Instead, he concluded that his rulings were grounded on "well-established Fourth Amendment principles which serve as a bulwark against unwarranted governmental intrusion into the private affairs of every citizen, not just this defendant.
"The importance of these principles transcends this particular case."
Dr. Wecht was indicted in January 2006 on 84 counts in which the government claimed he used his public office for private gain. On the eve of trial nearly two years later, the government dismissed 43 of those counts.
The case was tried before U.S. District Judge Arthur J. Schwab over several weeks in early 2008 before ending with a hung jury in April of that year.
The government immediately announced it would retry Dr. Wecht, but then the case went to the 3rd Circuit Court on a number of appeals.
Late last summer, the appeals court sent the case back to the district court, but ordered that a new judge be appointed to hear it.
In January, Judge McLaughlin held an entire day of oral arguments, which he then followed with additional arguments in March. In the meantime, the government had further pared the case down to 14 counts, including mail and wire fraud, as well as theft from a program receiving federal funds.
While U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan will make a recommendation whether to appeal, the final say comes from the U.S. solicitor general.
"It's always the case, having nothing to do with the change in the administration, that a government appeal from an adverse decision has to be approved by the Solicitor General," said Harry Litman, former U.S. attorney in Pittsburgh.
The Obama administration asked months ago that all sitting U.S. attorneys remain in place, and Ms. Buchanan has done that. Sen. Robert P. Casey, D-Pa., earlier this week posted an application for potential U.S. attorney candidates on his Web site. Those applications are due June 5.
No matter what, it is extremely unlikely that a new U.S. attorney would be in place before time elapses for an appeal in this case to be filed.
Dick Thornburgh, a former U.S. attorney general who was part of Dr. Wecht's defense team, has said all along that the case never should have been prosecuted.
"It is reassuring to finally find a judge who recognized how flimsy these charges were," he said. "Perhaps Dr. Wecht and his family can now get on with their lives free of the unjustified cloud which has hung over them for far too long."
Dr. Wecht would not say how much money the case has cost him.
"It has wiped me out. If I remain active for 20 more years, there's no way I could begin to recoup what it has cost me financially," he said.
He also added that the public corruption charges carry a "stigma that no one wants." While he said that there is a lot that must be undone, he believes the community supports him.
For his part, Mr. McDevitt said that the case has also damaged the U.S. attorney's office.
"It's not a pretty picture when you stand back and look at the prosecution of Cyril Wecht," he said. "It is a black spot on this district and I hope this ends it."
Paula Reed Ward can be reached at pward@post-gazette.com or 412-263-2620. Sadie Gurman can be reached at sgurman@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1878.
First published on May 15, 2009 at 12:00 am
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Federal prosecutor admits mistake, begs for leniency
Source: www.boston.com
By Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff
May 12, 2009
A federal prosecutor today acknowledged that she withheld evidence that could have helped clear a defendant in a gun case but said it was an inadvertent mistake and implored the chief judge of the US District Court in Massachusetts not to impose sanctions that could derail her career.
"It is my mistake. It rests on my shoulders,'' a composed Assistant US Attorney Suzanne Sullivan said during an extraordinary hearing in Boston that lasted more than two hours. "I also ask the court to give me the opportunity to rebuild my reputation.''
But Judge Mark L. Wolf said he was considering several sanctions because he was so appalled by Sullivan's lapse and by what he characterized as a pattern of prosecutors in the US attorney's office withholding evidence. The sanctions ranged from fining her personally -- something prosecutors said would be a first by a federal judge in the country for a lapse of Sullivan's type -- to an order that she and perhaps all 90 prosecutors in the office undergo additional training about the constitutional duty to share such evidence.
"It's unpardonable, and if I don't find it deliberate, I find it's at least ignorance and reckless disregard,'' Wolf said at a hearing during which he criticized both the US attorney's office and the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility.
Wolf wrote US Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. last month to ask him to crack down on prosecutors who fail to disclose information that could clear defendants and repeated his past assessment that the Boston office has a "dismal history of intentional and inadvertent violations.'' Wolf wrote that similar appeals he made to Holder's predecessors in recent years achieved little.
Joseph F. Savage Jr., a private defense lawyer in Boston and former federal prosecutor who represented Sullivan at the hearing, repeatedly gestured toward his client and told Wolf that a sanction represented "annihilation'' of her career.
Such a sanction, said legal specialists, would be a blot on her record with the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers and could expose her to further disciplinary action.
Savage also said that Sullivan was a well-respected, diligent prosecutor who should not be blamed for earlier lapses by the office. She worked as a state prosecutor in the Plymouth District Attorney's office for 11 years before she joined the US attorney's office in January 2006.
Wolf took the arguments under advisement and said he will issue a written decision later.
Sullivan failed to disclose that a Boston police officer's testimony at a pretrial hearing contradicted what the office had repeatedly told the prosecutor beforehand. The defendant was Darwin E. Jones, a Mattapan man who was arrested in July 2007 in a Boston gun case.
The truth only came to light, according to Wolf, when the judge reviewed Sullivan's notes of her interviews of the police officer, Rance Cooley.
After Wolf chastised Sullivan in a sharply worded memorandum in January, prosecutors dismissed gun charges against Jones, according to his lawyer, John F. Palmer of Boston. Palmer said recently that he and prosecutors have reached a tentative plea deal on drug charges.
By Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff
May 12, 2009
A federal prosecutor today acknowledged that she withheld evidence that could have helped clear a defendant in a gun case but said it was an inadvertent mistake and implored the chief judge of the US District Court in Massachusetts not to impose sanctions that could derail her career.
"It is my mistake. It rests on my shoulders,'' a composed Assistant US Attorney Suzanne Sullivan said during an extraordinary hearing in Boston that lasted more than two hours. "I also ask the court to give me the opportunity to rebuild my reputation.''
But Judge Mark L. Wolf said he was considering several sanctions because he was so appalled by Sullivan's lapse and by what he characterized as a pattern of prosecutors in the US attorney's office withholding evidence. The sanctions ranged from fining her personally -- something prosecutors said would be a first by a federal judge in the country for a lapse of Sullivan's type -- to an order that she and perhaps all 90 prosecutors in the office undergo additional training about the constitutional duty to share such evidence.
"It's unpardonable, and if I don't find it deliberate, I find it's at least ignorance and reckless disregard,'' Wolf said at a hearing during which he criticized both the US attorney's office and the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility.
Wolf wrote US Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. last month to ask him to crack down on prosecutors who fail to disclose information that could clear defendants and repeated his past assessment that the Boston office has a "dismal history of intentional and inadvertent violations.'' Wolf wrote that similar appeals he made to Holder's predecessors in recent years achieved little.
Joseph F. Savage Jr., a private defense lawyer in Boston and former federal prosecutor who represented Sullivan at the hearing, repeatedly gestured toward his client and told Wolf that a sanction represented "annihilation'' of her career.
Such a sanction, said legal specialists, would be a blot on her record with the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers and could expose her to further disciplinary action.
Savage also said that Sullivan was a well-respected, diligent prosecutor who should not be blamed for earlier lapses by the office. She worked as a state prosecutor in the Plymouth District Attorney's office for 11 years before she joined the US attorney's office in January 2006.
Wolf took the arguments under advisement and said he will issue a written decision later.
Sullivan failed to disclose that a Boston police officer's testimony at a pretrial hearing contradicted what the office had repeatedly told the prosecutor beforehand. The defendant was Darwin E. Jones, a Mattapan man who was arrested in July 2007 in a Boston gun case.
The truth only came to light, according to Wolf, when the judge reviewed Sullivan's notes of her interviews of the police officer, Rance Cooley.
After Wolf chastised Sullivan in a sharply worded memorandum in January, prosecutors dismissed gun charges against Jones, according to his lawyer, John F. Palmer of Boston. Palmer said recently that he and prosecutors have reached a tentative plea deal on drug charges.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Letter From Law Professor to Attorney General Holder
Following is a letter from Bennett L. Gershman, James D. Hopkins Professor of Law in White Plains, New York to United States Attorney General Eric Holder.
May 1, 2009
Honorable Eric H. Holder, Jr.
United States Attorney General
United States Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20530-0001
Re: United States of America v. Don E. Siegelman, et al.
In the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit No. 07-13163-B
Dear Attorney General Holder:
I am a former prosecutor in New York State. I served in the office of Manhattan District Attorney Frank S. Hogan, and thereafter prosecuted official corruption cases as an Assistant State Attorney General. I teach and lecture on criminal justice matters, and have published two treatises, Prosecutorial Misconduct (2nd ed. Thomson-West) and Trial Error and Misconduct (2nd ed. Lexis Law Publishing). I am taking the liberty of writing to you in support of applications you have already received to dismiss the charges against Don Siegelman.
I have studied, commented, and written for many years on the conduct and misconduct of prosecutors, both federal and state. I have testified before Congress and in courtrooms on the legal and ethical responsibility of prosecutors, lectured in training programs for prosecutors, and been quoted on by the media. I have followed the Siegelman prosecution for several years, and I have lectured and written about it. With this background I can say that among the thousands of cases of prosecutorial misconduct that I have studied over the years, the Siegelman case stands out starkly. Indeed, I have never encountered another prosecution in which it appears so clearly that the prosecutors were zealously bent on pursuing an individual, rather than on a crime that needed to be prosecuted. As an example of a bad faith prosecution, the Siegelman case may be without parallel.
I would like to identify several disturbing irregularities in this case that appear to dwarf irregularities in other recent federal prosecutions that have received attention not just in the media but from the Department of Justice.
When I was a prosecutor many years ago, I regarded the Justice Department as a ministry of justice, an office that enjoyed an outstanding reputation for independence, impartiality, and the fair-minded pursuit of justice. Over the past eight years, that reputation has been severely tarnished, and the quality of justice strained. And there is no better example of the corrosive effect on the reputation of the Justice Department, in my opinion, than the prosecution of Don Siegelman. I am reminded of a quote from one of your predecessors, Justice Robert H. Jackson, in a speech more than seventy years ago to the annual conference of United States Attorneys. In discussing the difficulties and challenges of federal prosecution, Justice Jackson identified “the most dangerous power of the prosecutor” to be the power to pick defendants rather than choose appropriate cases that needed to be prosecuted. I can think of no better illustration of the abuse of the prosecutorial function than the prosecution of Don Siegelman. Terminating this prosecution by dismissal of all charges would properly serve the ends of justice and fairness.
Thank you in advance for your consideration
Most respectfully,
Bennett L. Gershman
May 1, 2009
Honorable Eric H. Holder, Jr.
United States Attorney General
United States Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20530-0001
Re: United States of America v. Don E. Siegelman, et al.
In the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit No. 07-13163-B
Dear Attorney General Holder:
I am a former prosecutor in New York State. I served in the office of Manhattan District Attorney Frank S. Hogan, and thereafter prosecuted official corruption cases as an Assistant State Attorney General. I teach and lecture on criminal justice matters, and have published two treatises, Prosecutorial Misconduct (2nd ed. Thomson-West) and Trial Error and Misconduct (2nd ed. Lexis Law Publishing). I am taking the liberty of writing to you in support of applications you have already received to dismiss the charges against Don Siegelman.
I have studied, commented, and written for many years on the conduct and misconduct of prosecutors, both federal and state. I have testified before Congress and in courtrooms on the legal and ethical responsibility of prosecutors, lectured in training programs for prosecutors, and been quoted on by the media. I have followed the Siegelman prosecution for several years, and I have lectured and written about it. With this background I can say that among the thousands of cases of prosecutorial misconduct that I have studied over the years, the Siegelman case stands out starkly. Indeed, I have never encountered another prosecution in which it appears so clearly that the prosecutors were zealously bent on pursuing an individual, rather than on a crime that needed to be prosecuted. As an example of a bad faith prosecution, the Siegelman case may be without parallel.
I would like to identify several disturbing irregularities in this case that appear to dwarf irregularities in other recent federal prosecutions that have received attention not just in the media but from the Department of Justice.
- Despite doubts expressed by line prosecutors about evidentiary weaknesses in the Siegelman case, it appears that the investigation involved an unusually long and far-ranging process of cycling and recycling multiple theories and allegations for over five years before an indictment was brought, dismissed, and another brought.
- A witness who testified under oath before the House Judiciary Committee, Jill Simpson, stated that Rob Riley, an acquaintance who is the son of Alabama Governor Bob Riley, told her that his father and Bill Canary, a prominent Republican operative in Alabama with close ties to the White House, had spoken to Karl Rove about mobilizing additional Justice Department resources to bring a second indictment against Mr. Siegelman after the first federal indictment had been dismissed for lack of sufficient evidence. There appears to be considerable independent evidence to corroborate Ms. Simpson’s allegations.
- It appears that pressure was brought from both the Justice Department and the White House to find prosecutable evidence against Mr. Siegelman. As Douglas Jones, a former and highly respected United States Attorney in Alabama, stated before the House Judiciary Committee: “It appeared that agents were not investigating any allegations of a crime, but were fishing around for anything they could find against an individual.”
- The key witness for the prosecution, Nick Bailey, appears to have been interviewed more than 70 times in an effort to get him to adjust his testimony to mesh with the theory of the prosecution. It has also been alleged that records of these “coaching” sessions, which also included threats to prosecute Mr. Bailey’s brother, were not disclosed to the defense, in violation of discovery requirements. There is also some reason to believe that Mr. Bailey’s testimony before the grand jury was manipulated to accord with the prosecutor’s theory of the case.
- The United States Attorney for the indicting district, Leura Canary, the wife of Bill Canary, had recused herself from the Siegelman prosecution because of the obvious conflict of interest. However, it appears from published reports that Mrs. Canary was nonetheless heavily involved in the investigation and prosecution of the case.
- The strained theory of bribery relied on by the prosecution appears to be unprecedented. The payment by co-defendant Richard Scrushy was neither to Mr. Siegelman nor to his campaign. Mr. Siegelman personally received nothing. Mr. Scrushy previously had been appointed to the exact same medical board by Republican governors. Indeed, this may be the first bribery prosecution in U.S. history predicated on an issue-advocacy campaign contribution.
- Allegations of misconduct by jurors, particularly a series of juror emails, precipitated an investigation by the Justice Department, as well as an ex parte communication between the government and the trial judge while a defense motion on this precise issue was pending before the judge.
- There appears to have been a double standard used by the Justice Department in the prosecution of Mr. Siegelman. Reports from a key witness indicated that payments and free campaign items were made to Republican politicians in Alabama exactly like those to Mr. Siegelman, but none of these allegations was ever even investigated.
- It appears that several of the prosecutors who were cited for misconduct by Federal District Judge Emmet Sullivan in the prosecution of former Senator Ted Stevens were also involved in the Siegelman prosecution.
When I was a prosecutor many years ago, I regarded the Justice Department as a ministry of justice, an office that enjoyed an outstanding reputation for independence, impartiality, and the fair-minded pursuit of justice. Over the past eight years, that reputation has been severely tarnished, and the quality of justice strained. And there is no better example of the corrosive effect on the reputation of the Justice Department, in my opinion, than the prosecution of Don Siegelman. I am reminded of a quote from one of your predecessors, Justice Robert H. Jackson, in a speech more than seventy years ago to the annual conference of United States Attorneys. In discussing the difficulties and challenges of federal prosecution, Justice Jackson identified “the most dangerous power of the prosecutor” to be the power to pick defendants rather than choose appropriate cases that needed to be prosecuted. I can think of no better illustration of the abuse of the prosecutorial function than the prosecution of Don Siegelman. Terminating this prosecution by dismissal of all charges would properly serve the ends of justice and fairness.
Thank you in advance for your consideration
Most respectfully,
Bennett L. Gershman
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Elite Unit’s Problems Pose Test for Attorney General
Source: New York Times, www.nytimes.com
By Charlie Savage
May 8, 2009
WASHINGTON — A week after shutting down the criminal case against former Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska because it had been botched by prosecutors, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. delivered a pep talk to Justice Department lawyers.
“I’m here to tell you personally that I’ve got your back,” Mr. Holder told prosecutors in the department’s Public Integrity Section, an elite unit charged with pursuing corruption charges against public officials. He called them “among the finest lawyers in the entire government,” promised them more resources and vowed not to back off from “prosecuting the tough cases when warranted because of the criticism we’re getting right now.”
Despite Mr. Holder’s gesture of reassurance last month, recalled by someone present, the public integrity unit, once the pride of the Justice Department, is badly in need of rehabilitation, according to current and former officials.
Mr. Holder’s ambitions for the section, where he worked two decades ago, may well be a test of how much he can change a department that was at the center of some of the Bush administration’s biggest controversies, including its legal opinions approving harsh interrogations, the politicization of civil-service hiring and the firing of United States attorneys.
“Holder faces calls for more autonomy and freedom from political influence on one hand — consider the torture memo and the U.S. attorney firings — and demands for more supervision and training on the other — consider the public integrity unit,” said Daniel Richman, a Columbia University law professor and former federal prosecutor.
The Public Integrity Section has scored some successes in recent years, most notably a string of convictions connected to the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, including that of Bob Ney, a Republican former congressman from Ohio.
Less visibly, though, a decision by the Bush administration eight years ago to shake up the section has had some troubling consequences, like frequent leadership changes and the loss of experienced prosecutors, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former officials. Against that backdrop, court records show that the Stevens case has not been the only one in which the unit may have failed to disclose evidence favorable to the defense, as required by law.
“What you are having is a kind of organizational failure,” said David A. Sklansky, a Berkeley law professor and former federal prosecutor.
Mr. Sklansky said the pressure to bring cases coupled with the erosion of “the institutional memory of the unit and the availability of prosecutors with seasoned, detached judgment” had created an ideal environment for mistakes like the disclosure violations.
In 2001, Michael Chertoff, the new assistant attorney general for the criminal division, decided to replace the Public Integrity Section’s longtime chief, Lee Radek. “The thought was that fresh energy might be useful,” Mr. Chertoff said in an interview.
Under Mr. Radek, some law-enforcement officials had complained that the section moved too slowly and declined to prosecute many cases. Congressional Republicans also criticized Mr. Radek after he recommended against appointing an independent counsel to look into accusations of illegal campaign fund-raising by Vice President Al Gore.
While Mr. Chertoff said his decision to change the section’s leadership had nothing to do with politics, several former career prosecutors said Mr. Radek’s removal was interpreted internally as retribution for a politically unpopular decision. And, adding to prosecutors’ concerns about maintaining independence from political appointees, Mr. Chertoff brought in as new section leaders two outsiders who had worked for him when he was a United States attorney in New Jersey.
Moreover, the pipeline of high-profile corruption investigations began to dry up, as the Federal Bureau of Investigation began reassigning agents to counterterrorism work after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But with the section’s leaders wary of passing on potential cases, prosecutors took on lower-profile infractions. The section’s annual reports from that period recount numerous convictions of low-ranking officials for relatively small violations, like inflating overtime.
“All kinds of little piddly stuff was just kind of worked to death, and that kind of demoralized people,” said one former prosecutor with the public integrity unit. “The flip side of that was that we were probably overly aggressive about things that weren’t crimes of the century. You could argue that the Stevens case is an example of that. It was a forms case — a guy got his financial disclosure forms wrong.”
As discontent over the section’s new direction mounted, turnover soared to an unusually high level, former officials said. Comparable rates from previous eras are unavailable, but records show that only a quarter of the prosecutors working at the section when former President George W. Bush left office were there when he arrived.
Significant departures included the section’s deputy chief, Stuart Goldberg, described as a cautious and stringent quality-control enforcer. His replacement, Brenda K. Morris, led the Stevens trial. While she had worked there since the 1990s, she had not headed its highest-profile cases, and a case she led in 2003 ended in an acquittal and a settlement that cost taxpayers $1.34 million.
There were other warnings of problems in the section before the Stevens case. For example, in the case of David Safavian, a Bush official charged in the Abramoff scandal, a judge wrote in December 2008 that documents in prosecutors’ possession, brought to light by a recent book, “should be disclosed to the defendant immediately because they constitute favorable or potentially favorable evidence.”
The revelation implied that prosecutors might have improperly failed to disclose that material at Mr. Safavian’s 2006 trial, in which he was convicted. But the order attracted little attention because he was already scheduled for retrial on other charges. (He was convicted again.)
Mr. Holder has signaled that such disclosure lapses may be a systematic problem. Last month, he ordered all prosecutors to undergo retraining and established a working group to review where they needed additional resources to fulfill their obligations to provide material to the defense.
He has also made several other moves, including changing the leadership of the department’s internal ethics unit, the Office of Professional Responsibility, which the judge in the Stevens case criticized for moving slowly.
For now, the Public Integrity Section’s chief, William M. Welch II, and its deputy, Ms. Morris, are under a contempt order and are being investigated for their conduct in the Stevens case. Mr. Holder’s challenge, former officials say, is to maintain the morale of his old section as it continues to handle cases and he evaluates how to rebuild it.
In his retraining announcement, Mr. Holder hinted at the scope of that larger task.
“The actions we are taking today are part of an ongoing process to ensure justice is served in every case the department brings,” he said. “We will continue to review how cases are managed before, during and after charges are filed, and where there is room for improvement, we will make additional changes.”
By Charlie Savage
May 8, 2009
WASHINGTON — A week after shutting down the criminal case against former Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska because it had been botched by prosecutors, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. delivered a pep talk to Justice Department lawyers.
“I’m here to tell you personally that I’ve got your back,” Mr. Holder told prosecutors in the department’s Public Integrity Section, an elite unit charged with pursuing corruption charges against public officials. He called them “among the finest lawyers in the entire government,” promised them more resources and vowed not to back off from “prosecuting the tough cases when warranted because of the criticism we’re getting right now.”
Despite Mr. Holder’s gesture of reassurance last month, recalled by someone present, the public integrity unit, once the pride of the Justice Department, is badly in need of rehabilitation, according to current and former officials.
Mr. Holder’s ambitions for the section, where he worked two decades ago, may well be a test of how much he can change a department that was at the center of some of the Bush administration’s biggest controversies, including its legal opinions approving harsh interrogations, the politicization of civil-service hiring and the firing of United States attorneys.
“Holder faces calls for more autonomy and freedom from political influence on one hand — consider the torture memo and the U.S. attorney firings — and demands for more supervision and training on the other — consider the public integrity unit,” said Daniel Richman, a Columbia University law professor and former federal prosecutor.
The Public Integrity Section has scored some successes in recent years, most notably a string of convictions connected to the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, including that of Bob Ney, a Republican former congressman from Ohio.
Less visibly, though, a decision by the Bush administration eight years ago to shake up the section has had some troubling consequences, like frequent leadership changes and the loss of experienced prosecutors, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former officials. Against that backdrop, court records show that the Stevens case has not been the only one in which the unit may have failed to disclose evidence favorable to the defense, as required by law.
“What you are having is a kind of organizational failure,” said David A. Sklansky, a Berkeley law professor and former federal prosecutor.
Mr. Sklansky said the pressure to bring cases coupled with the erosion of “the institutional memory of the unit and the availability of prosecutors with seasoned, detached judgment” had created an ideal environment for mistakes like the disclosure violations.
In 2001, Michael Chertoff, the new assistant attorney general for the criminal division, decided to replace the Public Integrity Section’s longtime chief, Lee Radek. “The thought was that fresh energy might be useful,” Mr. Chertoff said in an interview.
Under Mr. Radek, some law-enforcement officials had complained that the section moved too slowly and declined to prosecute many cases. Congressional Republicans also criticized Mr. Radek after he recommended against appointing an independent counsel to look into accusations of illegal campaign fund-raising by Vice President Al Gore.
While Mr. Chertoff said his decision to change the section’s leadership had nothing to do with politics, several former career prosecutors said Mr. Radek’s removal was interpreted internally as retribution for a politically unpopular decision. And, adding to prosecutors’ concerns about maintaining independence from political appointees, Mr. Chertoff brought in as new section leaders two outsiders who had worked for him when he was a United States attorney in New Jersey.
Moreover, the pipeline of high-profile corruption investigations began to dry up, as the Federal Bureau of Investigation began reassigning agents to counterterrorism work after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But with the section’s leaders wary of passing on potential cases, prosecutors took on lower-profile infractions. The section’s annual reports from that period recount numerous convictions of low-ranking officials for relatively small violations, like inflating overtime.
“All kinds of little piddly stuff was just kind of worked to death, and that kind of demoralized people,” said one former prosecutor with the public integrity unit. “The flip side of that was that we were probably overly aggressive about things that weren’t crimes of the century. You could argue that the Stevens case is an example of that. It was a forms case — a guy got his financial disclosure forms wrong.”
As discontent over the section’s new direction mounted, turnover soared to an unusually high level, former officials said. Comparable rates from previous eras are unavailable, but records show that only a quarter of the prosecutors working at the section when former President George W. Bush left office were there when he arrived.
Significant departures included the section’s deputy chief, Stuart Goldberg, described as a cautious and stringent quality-control enforcer. His replacement, Brenda K. Morris, led the Stevens trial. While she had worked there since the 1990s, she had not headed its highest-profile cases, and a case she led in 2003 ended in an acquittal and a settlement that cost taxpayers $1.34 million.
There were other warnings of problems in the section before the Stevens case. For example, in the case of David Safavian, a Bush official charged in the Abramoff scandal, a judge wrote in December 2008 that documents in prosecutors’ possession, brought to light by a recent book, “should be disclosed to the defendant immediately because they constitute favorable or potentially favorable evidence.”
The revelation implied that prosecutors might have improperly failed to disclose that material at Mr. Safavian’s 2006 trial, in which he was convicted. But the order attracted little attention because he was already scheduled for retrial on other charges. (He was convicted again.)
Mr. Holder has signaled that such disclosure lapses may be a systematic problem. Last month, he ordered all prosecutors to undergo retraining and established a working group to review where they needed additional resources to fulfill their obligations to provide material to the defense.
He has also made several other moves, including changing the leadership of the department’s internal ethics unit, the Office of Professional Responsibility, which the judge in the Stevens case criticized for moving slowly.
For now, the Public Integrity Section’s chief, William M. Welch II, and its deputy, Ms. Morris, are under a contempt order and are being investigated for their conduct in the Stevens case. Mr. Holder’s challenge, former officials say, is to maintain the morale of his old section as it continues to handle cases and he evaluates how to rebuild it.
In his retraining announcement, Mr. Holder hinted at the scope of that larger task.
“The actions we are taking today are part of an ongoing process to ensure justice is served in every case the department brings,” he said. “We will continue to review how cases are managed before, during and after charges are filed, and where there is room for improvement, we will make additional changes.”
Friday, May 8, 2009
W.R. Grace Acquitted in Asbestos Case, Shares Leap
Source: Reuters
By Clare Baldwin
Fri May 8, 2009 5:24pm EDT
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A federal jury in Montana acquitted chemical company W.R. Grace & Co and three of its executives on Friday on all counts in an asbestos environmental case, and its stock surged 36 percent.
The company and executives had been charged by a division of the Justice Department with knowingly endangering the lives of mine workers and other residents of Libby, Montana, near the Canadian border, and ignoring warnings by state agencies.
"We at Grace are gratified by today's verdict," Grace Chief Executive Fred Festa said in a statement on Friday.
"We always believed that Grace and its former executives had acted properly and that a jury would come to the same conclusion when confronted with the evidence," he said.
The case had been brought by the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division and the U.S. attorney for the district of Montana.
"The verdict was returned earlier today in open court: not guilty on all counts for all defendants," said Patrick Duffy, a clerk at the federal court in Missoula, Montana.
Grace, which is based in Columbia, Maryland, owned and operated a vermiculite mine and vermiculite processing facilities in and near Libby from 1963 to 1990. Vermiculite ore contaminated with asbestos -- a known human carcinogen -- was found nearby, according to the U.S. government.
The EPA began removing asbestos contamination in 2000 and Grace filed for bankruptcy protection from cleanup costs in 2001. The EPA filed to recover costs in 2003 and Grace agreed to pay $250 million in March 2008. The payment was the largest cash recovery under the Superfund law for cleaning up polluted sites, the Justice Department said at the time.
"The company worked hard to keep the operations in compliance with the laws and standards of the day," Grace said in a statement.
Vermiculite is used in many common commercial products, including attic insulation, fireproofing materials, masonry fill, and as an additive to potting soils and fertilizers.
Shares in the company, which is worth $945 million, were up 36 percent at $13.06. The stock has now doubled so far in 2009, after hitting a four-year low of $2.96 in November.
(Reporting by Clare Baldwin in San Francisco and Steve James in New York; Editing by Braden Reddall, Bernard Orr, Gary Hill)
By Clare Baldwin
Fri May 8, 2009 5:24pm EDT
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A federal jury in Montana acquitted chemical company W.R. Grace & Co and three of its executives on Friday on all counts in an asbestos environmental case, and its stock surged 36 percent.
The company and executives had been charged by a division of the Justice Department with knowingly endangering the lives of mine workers and other residents of Libby, Montana, near the Canadian border, and ignoring warnings by state agencies.
"We at Grace are gratified by today's verdict," Grace Chief Executive Fred Festa said in a statement on Friday.
"We always believed that Grace and its former executives had acted properly and that a jury would come to the same conclusion when confronted with the evidence," he said.
The case had been brought by the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division and the U.S. attorney for the district of Montana.
"The verdict was returned earlier today in open court: not guilty on all counts for all defendants," said Patrick Duffy, a clerk at the federal court in Missoula, Montana.
Grace, which is based in Columbia, Maryland, owned and operated a vermiculite mine and vermiculite processing facilities in and near Libby from 1963 to 1990. Vermiculite ore contaminated with asbestos -- a known human carcinogen -- was found nearby, according to the U.S. government.
The EPA began removing asbestos contamination in 2000 and Grace filed for bankruptcy protection from cleanup costs in 2001. The EPA filed to recover costs in 2003 and Grace agreed to pay $250 million in March 2008. The payment was the largest cash recovery under the Superfund law for cleaning up polluted sites, the Justice Department said at the time.
"The company worked hard to keep the operations in compliance with the laws and standards of the day," Grace said in a statement.
Vermiculite is used in many common commercial products, including attic insulation, fireproofing materials, masonry fill, and as an additive to potting soils and fertilizers.
Shares in the company, which is worth $945 million, were up 36 percent at $13.06. The stock has now doubled so far in 2009, after hitting a four-year low of $2.96 in November.
(Reporting by Clare Baldwin in San Francisco and Steve James in New York; Editing by Braden Reddall, Bernard Orr, Gary Hill)
Rove Lawyer: Likely Early June For US Attorneys Testimony
Source: TPMMuckraker
By Zachary Roth
May 7, 2009, 9:08AM
Karl Rove's long-awaited testimony before Congress about the US Attorney firings will likely occur around early June, according to Rove's lawyer.
Robert Luskin told TPMmuckraker that the Obama White House has been painstakingly sorting through the documents related to the firings, and is providing them to Rove and to the House Judiciary committee simultaneously. It's that process, said Luskin, that's driving the scheduling of Rove's testimony. Luskin stressed that the discussions have been cordial on all sides.
After the announcement in early March of the agreement securing Rove's testimony -- which will also cover the Don Siegelman case -- Luskin hadsuggested that we'd be hearing from Rove in "several weeks," though he declined to be more specific. But clearly, the process is taking longer than anticipated.
By Zachary Roth
May 7, 2009, 9:08AM
Karl Rove's long-awaited testimony before Congress about the US Attorney firings will likely occur around early June, according to Rove's lawyer.
Robert Luskin told TPMmuckraker that the Obama White House has been painstakingly sorting through the documents related to the firings, and is providing them to Rove and to the House Judiciary committee simultaneously. It's that process, said Luskin, that's driving the scheduling of Rove's testimony. Luskin stressed that the discussions have been cordial on all sides.
After the announcement in early March of the agreement securing Rove's testimony -- which will also cover the Don Siegelman case -- Luskin hadsuggested that we'd be hearing from Rove in "several weeks," though he declined to be more specific. But clearly, the process is taking longer than anticipated.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
New OPR Chief Predicts More Transparency in Attorney Investigations
Source: The BLT: The Blog of The Legal Times
Joe Palazzolo and Mike Scarcella
May 6, 2009
The new chief of the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility said Tuesday she expected greater transparency in investigations of attorney misconduct and a more open discovery process in criminal cases.
Mary Patrice Brown, in her first public remarks since assuming command last month, predicted more of the office's reports would be released to the public. The office will make judgments about disclosure on a case-by-case basis, depending on the severity of the misconduct, its pervasiveness, and the public attention it garners, she said. Brown said across-the-board releases would not be in the interest of the department, noting that part of the OPR's mission is to protect lawyers against frivolous complaints.
“I think you’re going to be seeing a lot more transparency in the OPR investigations,” said Brown, a 20-year veteran of the U.S Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, who most recently served as criminal chief. “The Office of Inspector General publishes reports. The Office of Professional Responsibility traditionally has not. But I predict that you’ll be seeing a little bit more transparency about that.”
Her remarks, at a disciplinary conference at the Mayflower Hotel, echoed comments by Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. to a group of federal judges last month. At the meeting, Holder encouraged judges to contact him directly with concerns about professional misconduct.
The OPR has been an object of scrutiny in recent months, as lawmakers and advocacy groups have pushed for the release of a report on the conduct of former Bush administration lawyers who authored controversial legal opinions sanctioning the use of harsh interrogation methods and endorsing a broad view of the president's wartime powers.
Federal judges have also taken aim at the office. In April, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan appointed an outside lawyer to investigate the six prosecutors involved in prosecution of former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, whose conviction was vacated last month at Holder's behest. The attorney general concluded the case was irreparably damaged by discovery errors, and the OPR has been investigating the prosecutors since October.
At the April 7 hearing on the government’s motion to dismiss the Stevens case, Sullivan cited the pace of the OPR investigation as one of his reasons for ordering the criminal contempt probe. He also implicitly questioned the office's independence. Brown was appointed the next day, replacing H. Marshall Jarrett, whom Holder elevated to head the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys.
Brown avoided mention of the Stevens case by name and declined to discuss the investigations when asked about them by a member of the audience. But in explaining the various avenues through which complaints reach the OPR, she said, “Some of you may have heard that occasionally a judge gets a little upset and refers things to OPR or decides to take matters into his or her own hands, creating a special type of OPR."
Brown described the OPR as a “cleanup crew” assigned to probe for professional misconduct and weed out frivolous claims. “But sometimes, sadly, we uncover criminal conduct,” she said. Typically, the office refers such findings to department’s Public Integrity Section.
Brown noted three types of prosecutors who typically get into trouble: the over-zealous prosecutor, the under-zealous prosecutor, and the uniformed prosecutor. The OPR gets about 1,000 complaints a year, Brown said, and the bulk of them deal with alleged misrepresentations to court or to opposing counsel. On the next rung down, she said, are complaints related to lawyers’ failure to comply with DOJ regulations. Toward the bottom are discovery violations, she said, though they have attracted the most attention of late. Holder announced recently that department lawyers would receive additional training to reinforce their understanding of rules that govern discovery in criminal and civil cases.
“If your gut is telling you you do not want the defense to have this, then that tells you you must turn it over. That’s how we were trained. People who don’t do that, and hold things too close to the chest, those are the people who run into trouble,” Brown said. “In a white-collar case, the way I was trained, was for heaven’s sakes, turn it all over. What are you hiding? It’s easier that way.”
Brown also said she expects a more open discovery process, but stopped short of endorsing so-called “open file discovery,” where defense attorneys get everything. She predicted prosecutors would step up the practice of turning over disks containing “documents outlined and formatted for you so that defense attorneys can understand it.”
Mayer Brown partner Anthony Alexis, former deputy chief of the Major Crimes Section in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, says Brown’s remarks are not surprising. As a supervisor in the U.S. attorney’s office, she preached that in white-collar cases there should be an emphasis on turning over documents to the defense absent a compelling reason not to do so. “And the compelling reason is not that it hurts your case but that it hurts an individual,” says Alexis, whose practice focuses on white-collar defense and compliance. “I breathe a sigh of relief that there is a watchdog who understands it and who has been taught well herself and who will continue to teach well.”
Often lawyers cite Perry Mason as their raison d'être for entering the legal profession. Brown said she found inspiration in one the darkest chapter's in the nation's history.
“Sadly, I came home from school everyday and watched the Watergate hearings,” Brown said. “I wanted to do right and be like those, you know, crusading people on the Senate and House judiciary committees. So I think it’s kind of a nice circle for me to come back to a place that was started in 1975 really in response to what was going on in Watergate.”
Joe Palazzolo and Mike Scarcella
May 6, 2009
The new chief of the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility said Tuesday she expected greater transparency in investigations of attorney misconduct and a more open discovery process in criminal cases.
Mary Patrice Brown, in her first public remarks since assuming command last month, predicted more of the office's reports would be released to the public. The office will make judgments about disclosure on a case-by-case basis, depending on the severity of the misconduct, its pervasiveness, and the public attention it garners, she said. Brown said across-the-board releases would not be in the interest of the department, noting that part of the OPR's mission is to protect lawyers against frivolous complaints.
“I think you’re going to be seeing a lot more transparency in the OPR investigations,” said Brown, a 20-year veteran of the U.S Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, who most recently served as criminal chief. “The Office of Inspector General publishes reports. The Office of Professional Responsibility traditionally has not. But I predict that you’ll be seeing a little bit more transparency about that.”
Her remarks, at a disciplinary conference at the Mayflower Hotel, echoed comments by Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. to a group of federal judges last month. At the meeting, Holder encouraged judges to contact him directly with concerns about professional misconduct.
The OPR has been an object of scrutiny in recent months, as lawmakers and advocacy groups have pushed for the release of a report on the conduct of former Bush administration lawyers who authored controversial legal opinions sanctioning the use of harsh interrogation methods and endorsing a broad view of the president's wartime powers.
Federal judges have also taken aim at the office. In April, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan appointed an outside lawyer to investigate the six prosecutors involved in prosecution of former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, whose conviction was vacated last month at Holder's behest. The attorney general concluded the case was irreparably damaged by discovery errors, and the OPR has been investigating the prosecutors since October.
At the April 7 hearing on the government’s motion to dismiss the Stevens case, Sullivan cited the pace of the OPR investigation as one of his reasons for ordering the criminal contempt probe. He also implicitly questioned the office's independence. Brown was appointed the next day, replacing H. Marshall Jarrett, whom Holder elevated to head the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys.
Brown avoided mention of the Stevens case by name and declined to discuss the investigations when asked about them by a member of the audience. But in explaining the various avenues through which complaints reach the OPR, she said, “Some of you may have heard that occasionally a judge gets a little upset and refers things to OPR or decides to take matters into his or her own hands, creating a special type of OPR."
Brown described the OPR as a “cleanup crew” assigned to probe for professional misconduct and weed out frivolous claims. “But sometimes, sadly, we uncover criminal conduct,” she said. Typically, the office refers such findings to department’s Public Integrity Section.
Brown noted three types of prosecutors who typically get into trouble: the over-zealous prosecutor, the under-zealous prosecutor, and the uniformed prosecutor. The OPR gets about 1,000 complaints a year, Brown said, and the bulk of them deal with alleged misrepresentations to court or to opposing counsel. On the next rung down, she said, are complaints related to lawyers’ failure to comply with DOJ regulations. Toward the bottom are discovery violations, she said, though they have attracted the most attention of late. Holder announced recently that department lawyers would receive additional training to reinforce their understanding of rules that govern discovery in criminal and civil cases.
“If your gut is telling you you do not want the defense to have this, then that tells you you must turn it over. That’s how we were trained. People who don’t do that, and hold things too close to the chest, those are the people who run into trouble,” Brown said. “In a white-collar case, the way I was trained, was for heaven’s sakes, turn it all over. What are you hiding? It’s easier that way.”
Brown also said she expects a more open discovery process, but stopped short of endorsing so-called “open file discovery,” where defense attorneys get everything. She predicted prosecutors would step up the practice of turning over disks containing “documents outlined and formatted for you so that defense attorneys can understand it.”
Mayer Brown partner Anthony Alexis, former deputy chief of the Major Crimes Section in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, says Brown’s remarks are not surprising. As a supervisor in the U.S. attorney’s office, she preached that in white-collar cases there should be an emphasis on turning over documents to the defense absent a compelling reason not to do so. “And the compelling reason is not that it hurts your case but that it hurts an individual,” says Alexis, whose practice focuses on white-collar defense and compliance. “I breathe a sigh of relief that there is a watchdog who understands it and who has been taught well herself and who will continue to teach well.”
Often lawyers cite Perry Mason as their raison d'être for entering the legal profession. Brown said she found inspiration in one the darkest chapter's in the nation's history.
“Sadly, I came home from school everyday and watched the Watergate hearings,” Brown said. “I wanted to do right and be like those, you know, crusading people on the Senate and House judiciary committees. So I think it’s kind of a nice circle for me to come back to a place that was started in 1975 really in response to what was going on in Watergate.”
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Holder Promises Speedy and Transparent Reviews of Attorney Misconduct
Source: National Law Journal
By Andrew Longstreth
May 04, 2009
When Attorney General Eric Holder, Jr., took office earlier this year,
rebuilding morale at the Justice Department was one of his top priorities.But The National Law Journal's Joe Palazzolo reports that after the botched case against former Alaska senator Ted Stevens--in which the judge found that prosecutors had withheld evidence--he's also having to reassure federal judges of Justice's commitment to reviewing complaints against his own attorneys. We¹ll have to see what that does to morale.
According to Palazzolo, Holder met with the nation's chief federal district judges on April 21 in Washington, D.C. At the meeting, which was closed to the public, Holder promised improvements to the Office of Professional Responsibility and asked the judges to contact him personally about questionable prosecutor conduct. Palozzola reports that Holder even gave his cell phone number to the judges. How¹s that for service?
Chief Judge Mark Wolf of the District of Massachusetts took Holder up on the offer, reports Palazzolo. In a letter to Holder last week, Judge Wolf encouraged Holder to look into allegations of prosecutorial misconduct stemming from a high-profile mafia case and the prosecution of an FBI agent.
Assessing allegations of prosecutorial misconduct will be the job of Mary Patrice Brown, whom Holder appointed to the Office of Professional
Responsibility after Washington federal district court judge Emmett Sullivan dismissed the government's case against Stevens. At the meeting Holder praised Brown. "She sounds like she's really a ball of fire," one judge at the meeting told Palazzolo.
By Andrew Longstreth
May 04, 2009
When Attorney General Eric Holder, Jr., took office earlier this year,
rebuilding morale at the Justice Department was one of his top priorities.But The National Law Journal's Joe Palazzolo reports that after the botched case against former Alaska senator Ted Stevens--in which the judge found that prosecutors had withheld evidence--he's also having to reassure federal judges of Justice's commitment to reviewing complaints against his own attorneys. We¹ll have to see what that does to morale.
According to Palazzolo, Holder met with the nation's chief federal district judges on April 21 in Washington, D.C. At the meeting, which was closed to the public, Holder promised improvements to the Office of Professional Responsibility and asked the judges to contact him personally about questionable prosecutor conduct. Palozzola reports that Holder even gave his cell phone number to the judges. How¹s that for service?
Chief Judge Mark Wolf of the District of Massachusetts took Holder up on the offer, reports Palazzolo. In a letter to Holder last week, Judge Wolf encouraged Holder to look into allegations of prosecutorial misconduct stemming from a high-profile mafia case and the prosecution of an FBI agent.
Assessing allegations of prosecutorial misconduct will be the job of Mary Patrice Brown, whom Holder appointed to the Office of Professional
Responsibility after Washington federal district court judge Emmett Sullivan dismissed the government's case against Stevens. At the meeting Holder praised Brown. "She sounds like she's really a ball of fire," one judge at the meeting told Palazzolo.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Review of Russian Helo Conviction Sought
Source: Wired Magazine
By Sharon Weinberger
April 29, 2009, 10:52 am
For those who want a lesson in the perils of buying foreign weapons for the U.S. government, it makes sense to take note of an appeal that is currently winding its way through the federal courts. Last week, a magistrate judge issued a “show cause” order in response to an emergency motion filed on behalf of Jeffrey Stayton, a federal prisoner who was once a top U.S. government expert on Russian helicopters.
At issue is a little known trial that took place in Alabama in 2007, when Stayton, then an Army official, and William Childree, a defense contractor, were convicted of a scheme to defraud the government. The contract in question was for the purchase of two Russian Mi-17 helicopters.
The Justice Department accused Childree, whose firm was under contract to buy the helicopters for the Army, of paying about $61,000 to Stayton in exchange for favorable treatment. To support its claim that the money was a personal loan—not a bribe or payoff—the defense submitted a note, dated 2002, written by Stayton thanking Childree for the loan and promising repayment. The government, which asserted the note was an obvious fraud written years later to cover the defendants’ tracks, submitted the document to the FBI for forensic testing. After DOJ received the lab reports, it told the defense that the results were “inconclusive,” but declined to release the actual report.
In December 2007, both Stayton and Childree were convicted and later sentenced to prison.
This case is worth highlighting in the context of more recent revelations that the U.S. Army steered $500 million in limited and no-bid contracts to ARINC to purchase Mi-17s for Iraq and Afghanistan. Russian helicopters seem to attract a lot of intrigue.
But what’s interesting about this case right now is not the helicopters per se, but the involvement of theDepartment of Justice Public Integrity section, which has until May 4 to respond to allegations that it withheld exculpatory FBI forensic testing (a separate claim is that the government failed to produce a key witness; I’ll also get to that another time).
This has a familiar ring to it. The DOJ’s Public Integrity section is currently under the spotlight for its bungling of the prosecution of Ted Stevens, the former Alaskan senator who turned pork barrel politics into a form of high art during his four decades in Congress. A federal judge recently tossed Steven’s conviction for failing to report gifts (such as a nifty massage chair) after it was discovered that attorneys in the Public Integrity section withheld potentially exculpatory evidence. Six DOJ lawyers are themselves now under investigation.
Getting back to the Russian helicopter case, which involves the same section of DOJ, I was curious why the government attorneys would so steadfastly refuse to turn over the forensic analysis, since they argued back in 2007 that they did “not believe this document is even arguably exculpatory of the charges…”
This raises an obvious question: if that claim were true, then why not release the analysis?
For the moment, I’m going to set aside the merits of this court case, and deal strictly with the forensic testing, since it’s the subject of multiple Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests I have filed dating back over six months.
When I first filed a request last year to see the forensic analysis, the FBI, amusingly, told me they could not locate any files on Stayton or Childree (an interesting response considering that the FBI took part in the multi-year investigation). After I traveled to Alabama to examine court records and obtained the FBI case file number for the analysis, the FBI located the relevant documents. It has now been sitting with the FBI’s FOIA office for several months waiting to be assigned for disclosure review; weekly calls from my research assistant have showed little progress on that front (a separate FOIA, to the Department of Justice, has also yielded nothing).
In February, attorneys at Frohsin & Barger in Birmingham, Alabama took up the Stayton case pro bono and filed an appeal on his behalf, noting the withheld FBI analysis, among other issues. They also asked DOJ for a copy of the FBI testing, initially with no response. (An appeal has also been filed by the co-defendant, Childree, on separate grounds.)
Since neither the FBI nor DOJ have shown any indication of moving forward with my FOIA requests, I decided to take the direct approach: I called DOJ and told them I would be writing on this issue for Danger Room. Within minutes, DOJ somehow managed to locate the file—at least some of it—and release it to Stayton’s new defense team (who, in turn, released the analysis to me).
Reading the forensic analysis, it’s pretty clear why DOJ would hold on to it like a 10-year old with a bad report card; testing performed by the Secret Service for the FBI confirmed the ink used in the note was indeed in production in 2002, the year the note is dated. This does not prove when the note was written, but it does discount one obvious sign of fraud, which was the sole purpose of the test.
DOJ has declined all requests for interviews on this case. I e-mailed and called again last week to ask why the department is still refusing to release the in-house FBI tests. So far, I have received no reply. But several months ago, in response to a written question about the forensic analysis, the department replied: “The government complied with all of its discovery obligations under the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure and Evidence.”
But treating the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure and Evidence as a game of hide and seek has its drawbacks, as the Stevens case demonstrates. It’s perhaps even more troubling in the Russian helicopter case, because DOJ at trial and sentencing specifically argued that the note in question was fraudulent, yet refused to disclose testing that showed no evidence of fraud.
The Justice Department, according to Stayton’s defense attorneys, has still not released the rest of the testing results. “In the wake of Public Integrity outrage, it is not at all surprising that the Ashcroft/Gonzales Era DOJ elected to suppress such key evidence to avoid the prospect of a jury acquittal,” Henry Frohsin, an attorney for Stayton, told Danger Room.
“What is so disturbing now is the same denials seem to be emanating from the prior prosecutors without a new review or fresh oversight,” he said. “ How in the world can one justify withholding a forensic laboratory result that lends credence or corroborates the position of defendant?”
[Speaking of missing documents; I’m also still waiting for the Army to locate the very, very special letter outlining ARINC’s unique relationship with the Russian manufacturer of Mi-17s, as well as a purported market survey the Army says it conducted to justify the outrageous price it paid for Iraq’s helos. I'm guessing I'll get the FBI lab reports first, because at least I know those really exist. Also, tune in later this week as I finally get to writing about the oh-so mysterious Threat Systems Management Office, and its strange role in buying Russian helicopters.]
By Sharon Weinberger
April 29, 2009, 10:52 am
For those who want a lesson in the perils of buying foreign weapons for the U.S. government, it makes sense to take note of an appeal that is currently winding its way through the federal courts. Last week, a magistrate judge issued a “show cause” order in response to an emergency motion filed on behalf of Jeffrey Stayton, a federal prisoner who was once a top U.S. government expert on Russian helicopters.
At issue is a little known trial that took place in Alabama in 2007, when Stayton, then an Army official, and William Childree, a defense contractor, were convicted of a scheme to defraud the government. The contract in question was for the purchase of two Russian Mi-17 helicopters.
The Justice Department accused Childree, whose firm was under contract to buy the helicopters for the Army, of paying about $61,000 to Stayton in exchange for favorable treatment. To support its claim that the money was a personal loan—not a bribe or payoff—the defense submitted a note, dated 2002, written by Stayton thanking Childree for the loan and promising repayment. The government, which asserted the note was an obvious fraud written years later to cover the defendants’ tracks, submitted the document to the FBI for forensic testing. After DOJ received the lab reports, it told the defense that the results were “inconclusive,” but declined to release the actual report.
In December 2007, both Stayton and Childree were convicted and later sentenced to prison.
This case is worth highlighting in the context of more recent revelations that the U.S. Army steered $500 million in limited and no-bid contracts to ARINC to purchase Mi-17s for Iraq and Afghanistan. Russian helicopters seem to attract a lot of intrigue.
But what’s interesting about this case right now is not the helicopters per se, but the involvement of theDepartment of Justice Public Integrity section, which has until May 4 to respond to allegations that it withheld exculpatory FBI forensic testing (a separate claim is that the government failed to produce a key witness; I’ll also get to that another time).
This has a familiar ring to it. The DOJ’s Public Integrity section is currently under the spotlight for its bungling of the prosecution of Ted Stevens, the former Alaskan senator who turned pork barrel politics into a form of high art during his four decades in Congress. A federal judge recently tossed Steven’s conviction for failing to report gifts (such as a nifty massage chair) after it was discovered that attorneys in the Public Integrity section withheld potentially exculpatory evidence. Six DOJ lawyers are themselves now under investigation.
Getting back to the Russian helicopter case, which involves the same section of DOJ, I was curious why the government attorneys would so steadfastly refuse to turn over the forensic analysis, since they argued back in 2007 that they did “not believe this document is even arguably exculpatory of the charges…”
This raises an obvious question: if that claim were true, then why not release the analysis?
For the moment, I’m going to set aside the merits of this court case, and deal strictly with the forensic testing, since it’s the subject of multiple Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests I have filed dating back over six months.
When I first filed a request last year to see the forensic analysis, the FBI, amusingly, told me they could not locate any files on Stayton or Childree (an interesting response considering that the FBI took part in the multi-year investigation). After I traveled to Alabama to examine court records and obtained the FBI case file number for the analysis, the FBI located the relevant documents. It has now been sitting with the FBI’s FOIA office for several months waiting to be assigned for disclosure review; weekly calls from my research assistant have showed little progress on that front (a separate FOIA, to the Department of Justice, has also yielded nothing).
In February, attorneys at Frohsin & Barger in Birmingham, Alabama took up the Stayton case pro bono and filed an appeal on his behalf, noting the withheld FBI analysis, among other issues. They also asked DOJ for a copy of the FBI testing, initially with no response. (An appeal has also been filed by the co-defendant, Childree, on separate grounds.)
Since neither the FBI nor DOJ have shown any indication of moving forward with my FOIA requests, I decided to take the direct approach: I called DOJ and told them I would be writing on this issue for Danger Room. Within minutes, DOJ somehow managed to locate the file—at least some of it—and release it to Stayton’s new defense team (who, in turn, released the analysis to me).
Reading the forensic analysis, it’s pretty clear why DOJ would hold on to it like a 10-year old with a bad report card; testing performed by the Secret Service for the FBI confirmed the ink used in the note was indeed in production in 2002, the year the note is dated. This does not prove when the note was written, but it does discount one obvious sign of fraud, which was the sole purpose of the test.
DOJ has declined all requests for interviews on this case. I e-mailed and called again last week to ask why the department is still refusing to release the in-house FBI tests. So far, I have received no reply. But several months ago, in response to a written question about the forensic analysis, the department replied: “The government complied with all of its discovery obligations under the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure and Evidence.”
But treating the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure and Evidence as a game of hide and seek has its drawbacks, as the Stevens case demonstrates. It’s perhaps even more troubling in the Russian helicopter case, because DOJ at trial and sentencing specifically argued that the note in question was fraudulent, yet refused to disclose testing that showed no evidence of fraud.
The Justice Department, according to Stayton’s defense attorneys, has still not released the rest of the testing results. “In the wake of Public Integrity outrage, it is not at all surprising that the Ashcroft/Gonzales Era DOJ elected to suppress such key evidence to avoid the prospect of a jury acquittal,” Henry Frohsin, an attorney for Stayton, told Danger Room.
“What is so disturbing now is the same denials seem to be emanating from the prior prosecutors without a new review or fresh oversight,” he said. “ How in the world can one justify withholding a forensic laboratory result that lends credence or corroborates the position of defendant?”
[Speaking of missing documents; I’m also still waiting for the Army to locate the very, very special letter outlining ARINC’s unique relationship with the Russian manufacturer of Mi-17s, as well as a purported market survey the Army says it conducted to justify the outrageous price it paid for Iraq’s helos. I'm guessing I'll get the FBI lab reports first, because at least I know those really exist. Also, tune in later this week as I finally get to writing about the oh-so mysterious Threat Systems Management Office, and its strange role in buying Russian helicopters.]
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Judge Criticizes Prosecutors in Asbestos Case
Source: The Washington Post, washingtonpost.com
Associated Press
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
MISSOULA, Mont., April 27 -- The federal judge in the W.R. Grace asbestos case told Justice Department prosecutors Monday that they "presented discombobulated allegations" and didn't understand the evidence.
U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy did not rule immediately on defense motions to dismiss charges against Grace, a Columbia, Md.-based firm, and several former executives. But he raised the possibility of declaring a mistrial in the case, which has been before a jury for two months. Jurors, absent during the hearing Monday, were due back in court Tuesday.
Acting on a motion from the prosecution, Molloy did dismiss charges against one former executive, Robert Walsh. Prosecutors said they lacked evidence to continue their case against Walsh.
The government alleges that Grace and five former executives concealed health risks posed by asbestos-laced vermiculite from a northwestern Montana mine that closed in 1990. Attorneys for some Libby residents say asbestos has sickened about 2,000 people in and around the community and killed about 225.
The judge said that he mistrusts the testimony of a key government witness, Robert Locke, a former Grace executive who testified that he helped the company impede a government study of health issues related to the mine near Libby.
"Do you want to have these jurors convict someone on perjured testimony?" Molloy asked.
"We don't believe it's perjured testimony," replied Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Racicot.
Another federal prosecutor, David Cassidy, said that Locke's testimony was "more consistent than inconsistent" and that documents corroborate much of it.
Grace lawyer David Bernick said that misleading and prejudicial testimony have so tainted the trial that it cannot be salvaged. Bernick said the case has been litigated for political reasons, aimed at advancing the agenda of the Environmental Protection Agency, which oversaw years of environmental cleanup in Libby.
Associated Press
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
MISSOULA, Mont., April 27 -- The federal judge in the W.R. Grace asbestos case told Justice Department prosecutors Monday that they "presented discombobulated allegations" and didn't understand the evidence.
U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy did not rule immediately on defense motions to dismiss charges against Grace, a Columbia, Md.-based firm, and several former executives. But he raised the possibility of declaring a mistrial in the case, which has been before a jury for two months. Jurors, absent during the hearing Monday, were due back in court Tuesday.
Acting on a motion from the prosecution, Molloy did dismiss charges against one former executive, Robert Walsh. Prosecutors said they lacked evidence to continue their case against Walsh.
The government alleges that Grace and five former executives concealed health risks posed by asbestos-laced vermiculite from a northwestern Montana mine that closed in 1990. Attorneys for some Libby residents say asbestos has sickened about 2,000 people in and around the community and killed about 225.
The judge said that he mistrusts the testimony of a key government witness, Robert Locke, a former Grace executive who testified that he helped the company impede a government study of health issues related to the mine near Libby.
"Do you want to have these jurors convict someone on perjured testimony?" Molloy asked.
"We don't believe it's perjured testimony," replied Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Racicot.
Another federal prosecutor, David Cassidy, said that Locke's testimony was "more consistent than inconsistent" and that documents corroborate much of it.
Grace lawyer David Bernick said that misleading and prejudicial testimony have so tainted the trial that it cannot be salvaged. Bernick said the case has been litigated for political reasons, aimed at advancing the agenda of the Environmental Protection Agency, which oversaw years of environmental cleanup in Libby.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Holder to District Judges: DOJ Will Confront Misconduct
Source: The BLT: Blog of the Legal Times
Mark Scarcella
April 28, 2009
Addressing a group of chief judges of federal district courts last week, Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. vowed the Justice Department will take seriously failures of prosecutors to perform their duties, according to a judge who participated in the conference.
Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf of Massachusetts, who has pressed the Justice Department to be more aggressive in confronting allegations of attorney misconduct, wrote Holder on April 23 “with a renewed hope” that he will tackle misbehavior. Wolf’s letter was disclosed today in a mob racketeering case in Boston in which Wolf cited a prosecutor for misconduct.Wolf wrote that former Attorneys General Alberto Gonzales and Michael Mukasey did not respond to letters in recent years concerning allegations of misconduct in criminal cases in Massachusetts. In his letter to Holder, Wolf thanked him for his remarks to the chief judges.“We appreciate your determination to assure that Department of Justice attorneys perform their duties honorably and ably, and to take seriously any failure to do so,” Wolf wrote in the five-page letter. Holder had asked the judges, Wolf said in the letter, to report to him directly when the judges encounter a problem.
Wolf noted the recent decision of U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate allegations of misconduct in the Ted Stevens case in the District of Columbia. The special counsel is investigating whether six prosecutors deliberately violated court orders and rules in the Stevens case. At Holder’s request, the judge tossed Stevens’ conviction earlier this month.
Sullivan’s action in the Stevens case, Wolf wrote in the letter, “confirms that other judges share my concern” about prosecution misconduct. “As the Stevens case also indicates, prosecutorial misconduct is neither a rare nor merely historical problem,” Wolf wrote.
http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2009/04/holder-to-district-judges-doj-will-confront-misconduct.html
Mark Scarcella
April 28, 2009
Addressing a group of chief judges of federal district courts last week, Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. vowed the Justice Department will take seriously failures of prosecutors to perform their duties, according to a judge who participated in the conference.
Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf of Massachusetts, who has pressed the Justice Department to be more aggressive in confronting allegations of attorney misconduct, wrote Holder on April 23 “with a renewed hope” that he will tackle misbehavior. Wolf’s letter was disclosed today in a mob racketeering case in Boston in which Wolf cited a prosecutor for misconduct.Wolf wrote that former Attorneys General Alberto Gonzales and Michael Mukasey did not respond to letters in recent years concerning allegations of misconduct in criminal cases in Massachusetts. In his letter to Holder, Wolf thanked him for his remarks to the chief judges.“We appreciate your determination to assure that Department of Justice attorneys perform their duties honorably and ably, and to take seriously any failure to do so,” Wolf wrote in the five-page letter. Holder had asked the judges, Wolf said in the letter, to report to him directly when the judges encounter a problem.
Wolf noted the recent decision of U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate allegations of misconduct in the Ted Stevens case in the District of Columbia. The special counsel is investigating whether six prosecutors deliberately violated court orders and rules in the Stevens case. At Holder’s request, the judge tossed Stevens’ conviction earlier this month.
Sullivan’s action in the Stevens case, Wolf wrote in the letter, “confirms that other judges share my concern” about prosecution misconduct. “As the Stevens case also indicates, prosecutorial misconduct is neither a rare nor merely historical problem,” Wolf wrote.
http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2009/04/holder-to-district-judges-doj-will-confront-misconduct.html
Monday, April 27, 2009
Director John McTiernan to Discuss Political Prosecutions on Young Turks Show
Director John McTiernan, of Die Hard fame will be on The Young Turks Show this evening, April 28th discussing the intuitive new documentary, "The Political Prosecutions of Karl Rove". The film delves into the depths of the Justice Department corruption, under Karl Rove, and sheds light on many of the 600 politically motivated cases brought against Democrats across the country between 2002 and 2008.
Tune into XM Satellite Radio/Air America to hear the live interview at 8:40 pm.
Tune into XM Satellite Radio/Air America to hear the live interview at 8:40 pm.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
The Siegelman Case--Editorial
Source: The New York Times, nytimes.com
April 25, 2009
Attorney General Eric Holder’s recent decision to drop all of the charges against Ted Stevens, the former Republican senator from Alaska, because of prosecutorial misconduct raises an important question: What about Don Siegelman? A bipartisan group of 75 former state attorneys general has written to Mr. Holder asking him to take a fresh look at the former Alabama governor’s case. He should do so right away.
Mr. Siegelman was convicted in 2006 on dubious corruption charges. He spent nine months in prison before being released on appeal, and he faces years more behind bars. He has long insisted that the case against him was politically motivated and that prosecutors engaged in an array of professional and ethical violations.
Many aspects of the case require further scrutiny. United States Attorney Leura Canary is the wife of a prominent Republican political operative who was a strong opponent of Mr. Siegelman. Her office prosecuted Mr. Siegelman. Ms. Canary said that she recused herself from the prosecution, but questions have been raised about whether she actually did.
Mr. Siegelman’s supporters have long argued that he was targeted by the Justice Department because he was Alabama’s leading Democratic politician and stood a good chance of once again being elected governor. A Republican lawyer in Alabama, Jill Simpson, has said that she heard Ms. Canary’s husband, William Canary, say that he had discussed the prosecution with Karl Rove, the senior White House political adviser.
In the case of Mr. Stevens, who was convicted of felony charges for failing to disclose gifts and services, Mr. Holder was so troubled by the way the prosecution was carried out that he decided to drop the case entirely.
According to the Siegelman camp, at least three of the same officials who have been accused of prosecutorial misconduct in the Stevens case were involved in Mr. Siegelman’s prosecution. If true, this alone would seem to justify a thorough investigation of the case.
April 25, 2009
Attorney General Eric Holder’s recent decision to drop all of the charges against Ted Stevens, the former Republican senator from Alaska, because of prosecutorial misconduct raises an important question: What about Don Siegelman? A bipartisan group of 75 former state attorneys general has written to Mr. Holder asking him to take a fresh look at the former Alabama governor’s case. He should do so right away.
Mr. Siegelman was convicted in 2006 on dubious corruption charges. He spent nine months in prison before being released on appeal, and he faces years more behind bars. He has long insisted that the case against him was politically motivated and that prosecutors engaged in an array of professional and ethical violations.
Many aspects of the case require further scrutiny. United States Attorney Leura Canary is the wife of a prominent Republican political operative who was a strong opponent of Mr. Siegelman. Her office prosecuted Mr. Siegelman. Ms. Canary said that she recused herself from the prosecution, but questions have been raised about whether she actually did.
Mr. Siegelman’s supporters have long argued that he was targeted by the Justice Department because he was Alabama’s leading Democratic politician and stood a good chance of once again being elected governor. A Republican lawyer in Alabama, Jill Simpson, has said that she heard Ms. Canary’s husband, William Canary, say that he had discussed the prosecution with Karl Rove, the senior White House political adviser.
In the case of Mr. Stevens, who was convicted of felony charges for failing to disclose gifts and services, Mr. Holder was so troubled by the way the prosecution was carried out that he decided to drop the case entirely.
According to the Siegelman camp, at least three of the same officials who have been accused of prosecutorial misconduct in the Stevens case were involved in Mr. Siegelman’s prosecution. If true, this alone would seem to justify a thorough investigation of the case.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
AGs Demand Siegelman Review
Source: Harper's Magazine, harpers.org
April 22, 2009
By Scott Horton
Seventy-five former state attorneys general, Democrats and Republicans, have written to Attorney General Eric Holder demanding that he personally review the file relating to former Alabama Governor Don E. Siegelman. According to a report in today’s New York Times (as usual, the matter is not reported in the major Alabama newspapers, which championed Siegelman’s prosecution), the attorneys general cite
“gravely troublesome facts” about his prosecution that raise questions about the fairness and due process of the trial. “We believe that if prosecutorial misconduct is found, as in the case of Senator Ted Stevens, then dismissal should follow in this case as well,” the group said in the letter, which was organized by Robert Abrams, a former attorney general of New York.
The links to the Stevens case are numerous. The grave prosecutorial misconduct that led to the decision to overturn the Stevens conviction is virtually identical to the accusations in the Siegelman case. The charges are also sustained in the Siegelman case, as in the Stevens case, by a whistleblower inside the prosecution team. Moreover, the cases involve many of the same prosecutors, now themselves under internal Justice Department investigation for ethics lapses
April 22, 2009
By Scott Horton
Seventy-five former state attorneys general, Democrats and Republicans, have written to Attorney General Eric Holder demanding that he personally review the file relating to former Alabama Governor Don E. Siegelman. According to a report in today’s New York Times (as usual, the matter is not reported in the major Alabama newspapers, which championed Siegelman’s prosecution), the attorneys general cite
“gravely troublesome facts” about his prosecution that raise questions about the fairness and due process of the trial. “We believe that if prosecutorial misconduct is found, as in the case of Senator Ted Stevens, then dismissal should follow in this case as well,” the group said in the letter, which was organized by Robert Abrams, a former attorney general of New York.
The links to the Stevens case are numerous. The grave prosecutorial misconduct that led to the decision to overturn the Stevens conviction is virtually identical to the accusations in the Siegelman case. The charges are also sustained in the Siegelman case, as in the Stevens case, by a whistleblower inside the prosecution team. Moreover, the cases involve many of the same prosecutors, now themselves under internal Justice Department investigation for ethics lapses
Justice Department Misconduct Goes Deep
Yesterday, a New York Times article reported the request for an investigation into Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman's prosecution. This comes on the heels of the case being dropped against former Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens because of prosecutorial misconduct. The similarities between the two cases are too many to ignore. The cases are parallel in the types of misconduct, as well as the prosecutors in the cases. Stevens case was dropped, and now there is a bi-partisan effort from 75 former states attorneys to investigate the prosecution of the Siegelman/Scrushy case.
Why is this significant? Because these two cases are just two of the highest profile cases that are highlighted in our documentary. A new political documentary, "The Political Prosecutions of Karl Rove", directed by John McTiernan, highlights case after case of political targets that were hunted and tried by the U.S. Department of Justice. The film reveals startling evidence of a Republican led witch-hunt and offers indisputable evidence of Democrats across the country and across every level of politics who were victims of a rogue Justice Department on a political rampage.
In the months leading up to the 2008 general election, indictments of elected Democrats increased by nearly 50 percent...and each of the cases demonstrate disturbing parallels to the Ted Stevens and Don Siegelman cases. It is unknown how deep the Department of Justice went to try to keep Republicans in power, but "The Political Prosecutions of Karl Rove" delves deeper than any other current account to examine the corruption of Justice under the Bush administration.
View the film at http://www.politicalprosecutions.org.
Request for interviews, contact us at media@projectsavejustice.com.
Why is this significant? Because these two cases are just two of the highest profile cases that are highlighted in our documentary. A new political documentary, "The Political Prosecutions of Karl Rove", directed by John McTiernan, highlights case after case of political targets that were hunted and tried by the U.S. Department of Justice. The film reveals startling evidence of a Republican led witch-hunt and offers indisputable evidence of Democrats across the country and across every level of politics who were victims of a rogue Justice Department on a political rampage.
In the months leading up to the 2008 general election, indictments of elected Democrats increased by nearly 50 percent...and each of the cases demonstrate disturbing parallels to the Ted Stevens and Don Siegelman cases. It is unknown how deep the Department of Justice went to try to keep Republicans in power, but "The Political Prosecutions of Karl Rove" delves deeper than any other current account to examine the corruption of Justice under the Bush administration.
View the film at http://www.politicalprosecutions.org.
Request for interviews, contact us at media@projectsavejustice.com.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Review of Governor’s Conviction Sought
Source: The New York Times, www.nytimes.com
April 22, 2009
By John Schwartz and Charlie Savage
Less than a month after the Justice Department asked a judge to drop the case against former Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska because of prosecutorial misconduct, 75 former state attorneys general from both parties have urged Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to conduct a similar investigation of the prosecution of former Gov. Don Siegelman of Alabama, who was convicted nearly three years ago on bribery and corruption charges.
In a letter to Mr. Holder, the attorneys general said Mr. Siegelman’s defense lawyers had raised “gravely troublesome facts” about his prosecution that raise questions about the fairness and due process of the trial.
“We believe that if prosecutorial misconduct is found, as in the case of Senator Ted Stevens, then dismissal should follow in this case as well,” the group said in the letter, which was organized by Robert Abrams, a former attorney general of New York.
Lawyers for Mr. Siegelman, a Democrat, have long accused the Justice Department under President George W. Bush of conducting a politically motivated prosecution that they say was filled with irregularities, including a failure to turn over pertinent information to the defense team.
In the weeks since the Stevens prosecution was dropped over similar issues, Mr. Siegelman’s team has made efforts to draw parallels between the two cases.
One of Mr. Siegelman’s lawyers, Vincent F. Kilborn III, said in an interview from his office in Mobile, Ala., that at least three of the officials who have been accused of misconduct in the Stevens investigation have played a role in the Siegelman case, including Patty Merkamp Stemler, the chief of the appellate section of the criminal division at the Justice Department, who is being held in contempt in the Stevens case over documents demanded by the judge that were not produced.
“Here we are minding our own business,” Mr. Kilborn said, “and this Ted Stevens thing comes out — and some of the same cast of characters are in the Siegelman case, as it turns out.”
Mr. Stevens, a Republican, lost his Senate seat last year after being convicted of felony charges that he failed to disclose gifts and services. Mr. Holder dropped the charges on April 1 because of evidence withheld by prosecutors who are now the subject of an ethics investigation.
Laura Sweeney, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility is investigating the Siegelman case.
But she pointed out that a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit recently upheld Mr. Siegelman’s conviction, and because he is appealing that ruling, “the department will continue to litigate this matter in the courts, not in the media.”
Mr. Kilborn wrote a letter to Mr. Holder on April 3 laying out several of his charges of misconduct by prosecutors. He said Ms. Stemler sent a letter to lawyers on both sides concerning accusations that emerged in the appeals process that jurors had exchanged improper e-mail messages during the trial.
The letter revealed a private communication between United States marshals and the judge in the case that Mr. Kilborn characterized as inappropriate. The letter from Ms. Stemler came so late in the process, he said, that it limited options for the defense.
Ms. Stemler’s letter stated that the communication between the judge and the marshals had no effect on the case, however, and that it was only being revealed “out of an abundance of caution.” Mr. Kilborn scoffed at that logic, saying that any private dealings with the judge should have been noted at the time.
In the interview, but not in the letter, he noted that William Welch, chief of the department’s public integrity section, and his principal deputy, Brenda Morris, were held in contempt in the Stevens case and had a measure of involvement in the Siegelman case, though he did not offer evidence of misdeeds in his case.
Mr. Siegelman’s conviction centered on a donation by the former chief executive of HealthSouth, Richard M. Scrushy, to help retire a campaign debt. Prosecutors said that the donation was a deal for Mr. Scrushy’s appointment to the state hospital licensing board; Mr. Siegelman said it was nothing of the sort.
This is the third effort by Mr. Abrams to organize former attorneys general to help Mr. Siegelman, and the largest yet, with at least 10 Republicans signing their names. Grant Woods, a Republican and former attorney general from Arizona, said “nobody who signed that letter did so lightly,” especially those in his party. The issues transcended politics, he said, and the Kilborn letter raised serious questions.
“We think there’s something there to investigate,” he said. “This is not a desperate appeal by a convicted criminal defendant — these are substantial allegations that have great weight.”
Ultimately, however, the attorneys general have asked for something they have, in effect, already received. The Justice Department quietly disclosed in May 2008 that its Office of Professional Responsibility, an internal ethics watchdog, had begun an investigation into “allegations of selective or politicized prosecution” in four cases, including the one against Mr. Siegelman.
The Obama administration declined to talk about the details of the investigation.
For his part, Mr. Siegelman, who has been released from prison while awaiting the appeals of his conviction, said he was “enormously grateful” to the attorneys general for their intervention.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
April 22, 2009
By John Schwartz and Charlie Savage
Less than a month after the Justice Department asked a judge to drop the case against former Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska because of prosecutorial misconduct, 75 former state attorneys general from both parties have urged Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to conduct a similar investigation of the prosecution of former Gov. Don Siegelman of Alabama, who was convicted nearly three years ago on bribery and corruption charges.
In a letter to Mr. Holder, the attorneys general said Mr. Siegelman’s defense lawyers had raised “gravely troublesome facts” about his prosecution that raise questions about the fairness and due process of the trial.
“We believe that if prosecutorial misconduct is found, as in the case of Senator Ted Stevens, then dismissal should follow in this case as well,” the group said in the letter, which was organized by Robert Abrams, a former attorney general of New York.
Lawyers for Mr. Siegelman, a Democrat, have long accused the Justice Department under President George W. Bush of conducting a politically motivated prosecution that they say was filled with irregularities, including a failure to turn over pertinent information to the defense team.
In the weeks since the Stevens prosecution was dropped over similar issues, Mr. Siegelman’s team has made efforts to draw parallels between the two cases.
One of Mr. Siegelman’s lawyers, Vincent F. Kilborn III, said in an interview from his office in Mobile, Ala., that at least three of the officials who have been accused of misconduct in the Stevens investigation have played a role in the Siegelman case, including Patty Merkamp Stemler, the chief of the appellate section of the criminal division at the Justice Department, who is being held in contempt in the Stevens case over documents demanded by the judge that were not produced.
“Here we are minding our own business,” Mr. Kilborn said, “and this Ted Stevens thing comes out — and some of the same cast of characters are in the Siegelman case, as it turns out.”
Mr. Stevens, a Republican, lost his Senate seat last year after being convicted of felony charges that he failed to disclose gifts and services. Mr. Holder dropped the charges on April 1 because of evidence withheld by prosecutors who are now the subject of an ethics investigation.
Laura Sweeney, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility is investigating the Siegelman case.
But she pointed out that a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit recently upheld Mr. Siegelman’s conviction, and because he is appealing that ruling, “the department will continue to litigate this matter in the courts, not in the media.”
Mr. Kilborn wrote a letter to Mr. Holder on April 3 laying out several of his charges of misconduct by prosecutors. He said Ms. Stemler sent a letter to lawyers on both sides concerning accusations that emerged in the appeals process that jurors had exchanged improper e-mail messages during the trial.
The letter revealed a private communication between United States marshals and the judge in the case that Mr. Kilborn characterized as inappropriate. The letter from Ms. Stemler came so late in the process, he said, that it limited options for the defense.
Ms. Stemler’s letter stated that the communication between the judge and the marshals had no effect on the case, however, and that it was only being revealed “out of an abundance of caution.” Mr. Kilborn scoffed at that logic, saying that any private dealings with the judge should have been noted at the time.
In the interview, but not in the letter, he noted that William Welch, chief of the department’s public integrity section, and his principal deputy, Brenda Morris, were held in contempt in the Stevens case and had a measure of involvement in the Siegelman case, though he did not offer evidence of misdeeds in his case.
Mr. Siegelman’s conviction centered on a donation by the former chief executive of HealthSouth, Richard M. Scrushy, to help retire a campaign debt. Prosecutors said that the donation was a deal for Mr. Scrushy’s appointment to the state hospital licensing board; Mr. Siegelman said it was nothing of the sort.
This is the third effort by Mr. Abrams to organize former attorneys general to help Mr. Siegelman, and the largest yet, with at least 10 Republicans signing their names. Grant Woods, a Republican and former attorney general from Arizona, said “nobody who signed that letter did so lightly,” especially those in his party. The issues transcended politics, he said, and the Kilborn letter raised serious questions.
“We think there’s something there to investigate,” he said. “This is not a desperate appeal by a convicted criminal defendant — these are substantial allegations that have great weight.”
Ultimately, however, the attorneys general have asked for something they have, in effect, already received. The Justice Department quietly disclosed in May 2008 that its Office of Professional Responsibility, an internal ethics watchdog, had begun an investigation into “allegations of selective or politicized prosecution” in four cases, including the one against Mr. Siegelman.
The Obama administration declined to talk about the details of the investigation.
For his part, Mr. Siegelman, who has been released from prison while awaiting the appeals of his conviction, said he was “enormously grateful” to the attorneys general for their intervention.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
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