Interesting the judge had no complaints now that he is hearing civil cases.A Yakima County judge is no longer hearing District Court criminal cases because prosecutors expressed concerns that too many of his rulings showed a lack of legal knowledge. District Judge Ralph Thompson now handles county civil cases and contract judge duties for Grandview Municipal Court, where no complaints have been raised about his decisions. Chief District Judge Kevin Roy said he reassigned Thompson in early November, days after the Yakima County Prosecutor's Office first indicated its attorneys intended to request that Thompson not hear any criminal matters.
Although incredibly rare, state law allows prosecutors to file a continuing affidavit of prejudice against a judge. The so-called "blanket affidavit" means Prosecuting Attorney Jim Hagarty's office doesn't have to block Thompson each time a case is filed. Hagarty said he made the decision only after months of review in hopes that Thompson's decision-making process would improve. And he says he will stand by it, meaning Thompson won't hear criminal cases through 2010.
Last June, we reported that Nicholas Marsh (pictured), the disgraced and humiated federal prosecutor who botched the case against former U.S. Senator Ted Stevens by withholding evidence, was removed from his post and put on the international desk of the DOJ.Reaching even farther back to catch up, the New York Times has reported that Department of Justice attorney Nicholas Marsh has been working in his new Department of Justice job to get filmmaker Roman Polanski extradited to the U.S. to face sentencing for having sex with a minor more than three decades ago.
A former prosecutor of ex-U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens and other defendants in the federal probe into Alaska public corruption, Marsh left DoJ’s Public Integrity Section after the Ted Stevens prosecution collapsed in April. The lawyer was re-assigned to the lower-profile Office of International Affairs to handle extraditions, including that of the movie director who has long been a fugitive in Europe.
JACKSON (AP) — Disbarred lawyer Paul Minor and two judges he’s accused of bribing hope an unrelated case before the U.S. Supreme Court will get them out of prison. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has said the federal statute for honest-services fraud is too broad, joking it could make a crime of a worker calling in sick so he could go to a ball game.
A recent hearing before the Supreme Court has many legal experts believing the high court is poised to strike down the statute, which makes it illegal for public officials to fraudulently deprive constituents of honest services. Some observers say such a move would help Minor and former Coast judges Wes Teel and John Whitfield.
In March 2007 a federal jury convicted the three on corruption charges because Minor had helped to guarantee or pay off loans of the judges, who heard some of his cases. It was a scheme, prosecutors said, to influence the judges’ decisions and deprive the state of their honest service. They were convicted of bribery, conspiracy and fraud, and Minor also was found guilty of racketeering.
If justices throw out the statute, it would be the second victory for the three, which saw a panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently toss out all their bribery convictions after finding a lack of federal jurisdiction. Matt Steffey, professor at the Mississippi College School of Law, said the application of the federal bribery statute to a state court judge whose salary and office receives no federal funds is “shaky at best.” He said he believes they would go free if the high court finds the honest-services statute unconstitutional.
“There is some possibility that prosecutors will say the claim is procedurally barred,” he said. The 5th Circuit ruling on the bribery charges means they could be resentenced on the remaining charges. It’s not clear how much the reversal will reduce Minor’s sentence; he got the most time for a racketeering conviction, which was upheld.
Former State Rep. Sue Schmitz will not have to report to jail Dec. 30 as scheduled after a federal judge extended her reporting date to Jan. 28. Schmitz, 65, was convicted in February on fraud and mail fraud charges involving federal money that paid her salary while she worked in Alabama's two-year college system. She served in the Legislature at the same time. Prosecutors argued that she did little work for her pay.
U.S. District Judge R. David Proctor Monday issued the order to extend her reporting date, following a request by Schmitz's attorneys. Federal prosecutors opposed the request, noting that Schmitz had already obtained two extensions. Schmitz is appealing her conviction and also has a request before the 11th Circuit Court to allow her to remain free on bond during her appeal.
The Rove Republican Racket, upset that Shelnutt had successfully defended those accused of criminal conduct and embarrassed aggressive prosecutors, targeted Shelnutt. They accused him, among the 36 charges, of distributing cocaine and money laundering. The prosecutorial misconduct and jury's vindication has caused Shelnutt to file a motion "asking a federal judge to award him attorney fees and expenses, arguing that prosecutors waged a 'baseless, vexatious, frivolous, bad faith, harassing and stubborn' case against him," according to a report in today's Columbus Ledger-Enquirer.U.S. District Court Judge Clay Land is continuing his harsh criticism for the U.S. attorneys in the failed prosecution of Columbus attorney Mark Shelnutt.“The Court was particularly struck by the zeal with which the U.S. Attorney’s Office pursued Shelnutt and the Court became concerned when it learned of information suggesting that the U.S. Attorney’s Office had crossed the line from independent prosecutor to law enforcement,” Land wrote.
Land pointed to the actions of an assistant U.S. attorney who wore a hidden wire and recorded an interview with Shelnutt. When Shelnutt asked the prosecutor if he was recording it, the U.S. attorney lied. In a pretrial hearing and in the Shelnutt trial, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Ferguson of the Middle District of Georgia Office based in Albany testified he did not tell Shelnutt the truth when Shelnutt asked him if he was wearing a recording device.
Land also questioned the deals that some of the defendants received from the U.S. attorneys in exchange for testimony against Shelnutt. “The Court became concerned that the focus of the U.S. Attorney’s Office was on getting a high-profile lawyer and negotiating sweetheart plea deals with the actual drug dealers to accomplish that,” Land wrote. The “defendant’s deal was not the only sweetheart deal in the various cases arising from this massive conspiracy,” Land wrote.
In the recent court battle of experts trying to determine whether Elizabeth Smart's accused kidnapper is mentally competent, forensic psychiatrist Michael Welner was the highest paid warrior. The New York-based expert, who testified for federal prosecutors, was paid approximately $500,000. Two defense psychologists who testified last week earned less than $50,000 between them for their work.
There were differences. Welner spent more than 1,000 hours of work reviewing records, interviewing witnesses, writing a report and testifying in court. Much of the work of the two defense psychologists was done several years ago for an attempted prosecution in state court. Each was paid about $50,000 for their evaluations in that court, according to Mitchell's defense team.
U.S. Attorney Brett Tolman said Welner's work could help move along a case that has stalled for years over the question of whether Mitchell can understand the charges against him and assist his attorneys in his defense. "I think it was worth every penny," Tolman said Friday. "This case is unique because Mr. Mitchell would not submit to psychological testing. Any case deserves the most attention you can give to it, especially when it involves violent crimes."
Acting U.S. Attorney Timothy M. Morrison of the Southern District of Indiana, a proud member of the Rove Reublican Racket and a left-over from the Bush years, is more than a partisan politico who helps his well-connected Republican friends.The company's computers will be returned by federal investigators in Indiana who continue to investigate Fair Finance, its co-owner Tim Durham and related Indianapolis business Obsidian Enterprises. In federal court documents, investigators said they suspect Fair Finance was being operated as a Ponzi scheme.
''We have the material we need from the computers. So yeah, they'll get them back,'' Timothy M. Morrison, U.S. Attorney for the southern district of Indiana, said Friday. The computer files were ''forensically copied,'' he said. Morrison said he was unsure when the computers will be returned to Fair Finance. He said his office was legally obligated to return the equipment once the data from the hard drives were obtained and copied. ''The investigation continues,'' Morrison said.
He said he did not know if Fair Finance will also be getting back paper files that FBI agents took out of the East Market Street headquarters. The search warrants used in the raids remain sealed, Morrison said. No one has been charged or arrested in connection with the investigation. Morrison had filed a civil lawsuit containing allegations of a Ponzi scheme on Nov. 24, naming as ''defendants'' some assets of Fair Finance and Durham, but he voluntarily withdrew the suit less than a week later.
The charges and convictions against former Senator Stevens were dropped last April because of prosecutorial misconduct. Last month, we reported that prosecutors of the Rove Republican Racket manipulated and intimidated Allen by holding a stick: investigations of inappropriate sexual relations.Read more here.Anchorage resident Lisa Moore says she traded sex with then-Veco boss Bill Allen in 1996 for an apartment, money and jewelry. He was 59; she was 19. She also says she introduced him to a 15-year-old girl who became his sex partner. But the next year, an ex-boyfriend of Moore's got into legal trouble and threatened to blow the whistle on Allen's relationship with Moore and other teens, including the 15-year-old, Moore said, triggering a string of alleged cover-ups that now threaten to undermine the Alaska political corruption investigation.
Allen's conduct with that underage girl and at least one other has been the subject of an active Anchorage police investigation since 2008. That inquiry developed more urgency last spring when a prosecutor with the Justice Department's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section joined local detectives in the case and began traveling to Anchorage to interview witnesses, including a visit just last week.
But long before the authorities got involved, Allen reportedly went to great lengths to keep his sexual activities secret. When Moore told Allen she expected to be called as a witness at her ex-boyfriend's trial and forced to reveal Allen's seamy and possibly criminal private life, Allen immediately sent her, her brother and her fiance on the lam to California to prevent her from being subpoenaed, Moore told n Anchorage police detective and elaborated in recent interviews with the Daily News.
As we reported on Monday, the Rove Republican Racket was given a huge setback when a federal judge in the bastion of Republican politics, Orange County, California, dismissed charged and vacated a guilty plea of Henry Samueli, a technology company executive and owner of the Anaheim Ducks hockey team.Accusing prosecutors of a "shameful" campaign to intimidate witnesses and obtain unjustified convictions, a federal judge threw out high-profile criminal stock fraud charges against Broadcom Corp. co-founder Henry T. Nicholas III and the company's former chief financial officer. U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney issued his ruling Tuesday, less than a week after he overturned a guilty plea by company co-founder and Anaheim Ducks owner Henry Samueli
The judge also dismissed a civil lawsuit that the Securities and Exchange Commission had filed against Broadcom executives, wiping away misconduct allegations that had plagued the Irvine-based microchip giant for years. Samueli and Nicholas, both in the Santa Ana courtroom, embraced and sobbed. William J. Ruehle, the chief financial officer, thanked Carney and then hugged his attorney, Richard Marmaro. "It's the ultimate vindication for Broadcom," Samueli told reporters outside Carney's courtroom. "To see Broadcom's name smeared was so painful to me."
Tom Dawson, the embattled former Assistant U.S. Attorney of the Northern District of Mississippi and former protege of Ken Starr, is trying to hide the truth, even on live radio! The book has created a stir in Mississippi; Dawson was still working for the government when he agreed to write it. Dawson retired in January and returned to the office on an usual contract basis until June.
The U.S. Government suffered a "stunning" dismissal of a guilty plea last week of Henry Samueli (pictured), owner of the Anaheim Ducks hockey team, after Assistant U.S. Attorneys were accused of engaging in prosecutorial misconduct: intimidating defendants and leaking information to the media. A federal judge's decision to toss the guilty plea of Broadcom Corp. co-founder Henry Samueli – in the middle of the trial of another defendant – was highly unusual and has implications for related cases, lawyers unconnected to the case said today. "I have never, ever heard of this from any judge anywhere in the country," said Lawrence Rosenthal, a former federal prosecutor who is a professor at Chapman University School of Law in Orange. "It is stunning." After hearing Samueli's testimony, and without giving prosecutors a chance to argue, Carney told Samueli on Wednesday that he was setting aside his guilty plea and throwing out the criminal charge against him of lying to the Securities and Exchange Commission. John Hueston, a former top federal prosecutor in Orange County who now does white-collar defense work, said Carney's ruling was "virtually unprecedented and extraordinary." "Here, the defense effectively put the government on trial but was aided by some real-time misconduct by the government during the trial itself," Hueston said.
“I’ve looked at the plea agreement, I’ve listened to your testimony, and you didn’t make a false material statement,” Carney told Samueli, according to a transcript of the proceeding. Carney said that answers Samueli provided to the SEC may have appeared evasive and non-responsive. Based on Samueli’s testimony in court, those answers were truthful, the judge said. Samueli could have faced five years in prison for making a material false statement which his response to the SEC’s questions didn’t justify, Carney said.
“The fact that you truly understood what happened here means a lot to me,” Samueli said to the judge according to the transcript. “You have restored my faith in the criminal justice system, and I must be honest, that faith was shaken in the early days of this whole process.” Carney said he was “a little bit disturbed” by the way the government had treated Samueli and that he would take appropriate action at the appropriate time. The judge earlier agreed to Samueli’s request to bar one prosecutor from cross- examining him because he allegedly leaked information about Samueli’s grand jury testimony to reporters.
Readers may recall that the Rove Republican Racket went after Minor because of his Democratic political connections in Mississippi.A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has tossed out a bribery conviction in the public corruption case against former lawyer Paul Minor, but the remainder of his convictions remain intact. It will be up to U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate to decide what reduction, if any, he will give Minor in his 11-year sentence as well as $3 million in fines and restitution.
In 2007, a federal jury in Mississippi convicted Minor and two former Mississippi Gulf Coast judges — Wes Teel and John Whitfield — of corruption because Minor had helped guarantee or pay off loans of judges who heard some of his cases. The three-judge panel had previously raised questions about federal jurisdiction, asking prosecutors how a bribery charge could constitute a federal crime if it didn’t involve "any business, transaction, or series of transactions of such organization, government or agency involving any thing of value of $5,000 or more" as required by statute.
In September, we wrote about one of U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's proecutors who was accused of prosecutorial misconduct after allowing a government witness to testify falsely in a drug conspiracy case.Read more hereA former Chicago developer on Thursday claimed that the House Judiciary Committee is in the middle of a four-year investigation into his long-standing complaint that he was framed by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's office six years ago. Fitzgerald has been at the forefront of a slew of high-profile political cases and currently is leading the corruption case against former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Peter Palivos claims Fitzgerald's attorneys framed him during an investigation into another politician, former Gov. George Ryan. Palivos says the attorneys slapped him with a bogus obstruction of justice charge after he wouldn't lie for prosecutors seeking Ryan's conviction in the corruption case, and he claims they even got witnesses to lie in their testimony against Palivos. Palivos was convicted in 2003 and sentenced to a year in prison in 2005. Since then, he has been engaged in a vigorous campaign against Fitzgerald's office and has dragged Congress into it.
We think Morrison dropped the case for seizure simply because Durham is a prominent Republican donor who has supported the Rove-Bush-Cheney machine. How else can Durham continue donating if his accounts are frozen?The government no longer is suing to seize bank accounts and other assets of an Indianapolis businessman whom it alleged was operating a Ponzi scheme. The U.S. Attorney's office in Indianapolis...filed papers to dismiss a lawsuit to seize property belonging to Timothy Durham, including a 30,000-square-foot home on Geist Reservoir and a 2008 Bugatti sports car. Acting U.S. Attorney Tim Morrison says he dropped the case because he's been assured Durham will not try to shed the assets. FBI agents last [month] raided the offices of Durham businesses, Obsidian Enterprises of Indianapolis and Fair Financial of Akron, Ohio. A recent Indianapolis Business Journal story questioned whether Fair Financial could repay people who bought nearly $200 million in investment certificates.
Doing favors for Republican donors is not new for Morrison.[Durham] moves at the top of Republican political circles in Indianapolis. Durham, 47, a former attorney at the prominent Ice Miller law firm, is regarded as a close friend of Marion County Prosecutor Carl Brizzi's and a major contributor to [Indiana] Gov. Mitch Daniels' re-election campaign. He served on Daniels' re-election steering committee.
It has now been nearly two weeks since Fair Finance closed its doors, and investors are becoming increasingly nervous. Last week, Durham's lawyer said that the company planned to reopen today, but so far the offices are still shuttered. Some investors have taken to camping out in the company's parking lots, hoping against hope that someone will show up and open the doors.
Former State Representative Sue Schmitz begins her prison sentence on December 31st. A judge denied her request to remain free while she appeals her conviction. In February, Schmitz was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for a fraud conviction. She must also pay $171,000 in restitution. Prosecutors say Schmitz was paid for a job with the two-year college system, but did little or no work.
Dawson co-authored a book with right-wing blogger Alan Lange about the Scruggs judicial bribery cases and the political prosecution of Paul Minor, a Democratic fundraiser from Mississippi.What we find ineresting is Dawson is now attempting damage control by having handlers boast about an award he recently received from fellow members of the U.S. Department of Justice or shall we more accurately say, fellow members of the Rove Republican Racket. As we all recall, Dawson has failed to answer three simple questions about when he started to plan to write this book. Why? The writing could be a breach of ethics and involve prosecutorial misconduct.I do have concerns about Mr. Dawson’s role and said so. To amplify, I don’t believe a prosecutor (particularly one with the major role Mr. Dawson had in this case) should profit in any way from the sale of a book or otherwise about the investigation or the prosecution of the parties concerned. While I don’t question the fact that he followed whatever rules are established in this regard, Mr. Dawson himself spent several paragraphs at the beginning of the book explaining how he followed such rules and why he felt it was his duty to the public to participate. One question: absent participation in any profits/pay for being an author, why didn’t Mr. Dawson just make himself available to Mr. Lange as a source for the information in the book?
The special prosecutor investigating whether criminal contempt statutes were violated in the government's botched case against Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) has scheduled interviews with the six Justice Department lawyers at the center of the episode, according to three sources familiar with the effort. Henry F. Schuelke III, named to the assignment this year by a U.S. district judge who oversaw the Stevens case, is nearing the end of his investigation and already has sifted through thousands of documents related to the prosecution, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the probe is still underway. The interviews are expected to conclude by the end of January. They may help Schuelke determine whether prosecutors did not share critical evidence with the Stevens defense in an effort to hide material, or because of sloppy mistakes by a government team burdened by tight deadlines and inexperience.
WARWICK, R.I. — A veteran federal prosecutor pleaded not guilty Friday to drunken driving after Warwick police charged him following questions about whether he was initially let off the hook because of his law enforcement connections. Gerard Sullivan, 50, was arraigned on one count of driving under the influence and left the courthouse without commenting on the case. District Court Judge J. Terence Houlihan Jr. released Sullivan after he promised to appear at his next court hearing on Dec. 15. Unlike others arrested over the holiday weekend who refused breath tests, Sullivan was not charged with driving under the influence, a criminal charge. That decision contradicted a police department policy of charging suspected drunken drivers who refuse breath tests with the more serious criminal charge when other evidence supports it. After a legal review, [the local police chief] said Friday in a written statement that Sullivan should have been charged with driving under the influence. He called it a case of "fundamental fairness."
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Rhode Island on Thursday refused to comment on a veteran prosecutor’s arrest early Thanksgiving Day for refusing to take a chemical breath test after a Warwick police officer saw him driving erratically. “The Department of Justice instructed us not to talk about it,” Thomas Connell, spokesman for U.S. Attorney Peter Neronha, said in response to questions about Assistant U.S. Attorney Gerard B. Sullivan. Connell told The Journal earlier this week that the office was aware of the charge and would work with the Department of Justice to address any administrative consequences Sullivan might face.
In 2008, a human rights lawyer became unruly with federal prosecutors in a U.S. District Courthouse in Washington, DC. For that, he was arrested. Ye was charged with two felonies and taken to criminal court. Yesterday, the case was resolved and Ye was simply ordered only to pay a fine of $500. Federal prosecutors were forced to abandon their pursuit of two felonies after the judge stated he had no desire to have this case go to trial. The National Law Journal adds:The defendant, Ning Ye, a solo defense and human rights lawyer who is licensed in New York, was charged in October 2008 for a skirmish that happened months earlier in the vestibule of a courtroom in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Ye, who at the time was representing a man in a high-profile drug conspiracy case, was being escorted out when prosecutors say he became unruly. Ye was handcuffed and later strip-searched. He suffered cuts and bruises in the altercation.
We, too, sincerely hope the bulliness of U.S. prosecutors doesn't happen again, with or without a strip search.The presiding judge, Richard Leon, rejected the government's request that Ye serve a year of probation and take an anger management class.Assistant U.S. Attorney Karla-Dee Clark dismissed criticism from Ye and his lawyer that the prosecution was overreaching and that the case should not have been filed in the first place. She said the government takes "very seriously" how individuals behave. "None of this had to happen, and he knew better," Clark said. "We sincerely hope it doesn't happen again."
A veteran federal prosecutor was charged early Thanksgiving morning with refusing to take a chemical breath test after two drivers told the police a man at the wheel of a small BMW appeared "out of it," was "driving all over the road" and had hit curbs on Airport Road. After he was pulled over shortly after 1:15 a.m., Gerard B. Sullivan, 50, of Lincoln, an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Rhode Island, told the arresting officers more than once that he was a prosecutor, according to the police chief. He said he knew the police chief, according to the police report, and asked the arresting officer if there was "anything he could do."
[The police officer] asked [Sullivan] to submit to a series of standardized field sobriety tests. Sullivan had "extreme difficulty keeping his head straight and following the stimulus with only his eyes without moving his head as instructed," was "unable to stand in the heel-to-toe stance," "repeatedly missed heel-to-toe contact," continually raised his arms more than 6 inches from his side for balance, and "placed his foot down continuously" when asked to stand on one leg, according to [the officer's] report.
