"Shameful" Conduct in Brooklyn, New York

Last month, we posted a breaking news item about alleged prosecutorial misconduct in Brooklyn that was viewed at the time as possibly freeing a murderer.

Tonight, breaking news again. The New York Times reports:

Facing questions about whether a high-ranking prosecutor’s actions during a murder investigation and trial constituted misconduct, the Brooklyn district attorney’s office agreed on Tuesday to allow a man imprisoned in that case to have his murder conviction vacated and his record cleared with the assurance that he will not be retried. The agreement means that the man, Jabbar Collins, who 15 years ago was sentenced to 34 years to life in the murder of a Brooklyn landlord, will be freed later this week — the culmination of years of his own legal efforts to bring light to prosecutorial misconduct that he said deprived him of a fair trial. 

The decision also spares officials from the Brooklyn district attorney’s office — most notably the hard-charging prosecutor who oversaw the case, Michael F. Vecchione [PICTURED]— from being compelled to testify about the allegations of misconduct during a habeas corpus hearing that was set to resume this week. The deal amounted to a rare and embarrassing admission by the Brooklyn district attorney’s office — which had initially insisted that Mr. Collins be retried — that the case had been mishandled. Judge Dora L. Irizarry, of the United States District Court in Brooklyn, lamented that in agreeing to free Mr. Collins, the district attorney’s office had avoided a hearing that would have offered greater transparency into the case’s “troubling history.” “It is indeed beyond disappointing, it is really sad that the district attorney’s office persists in standing firm and saying that it did nothing wrong here,” the judge said. She described the handling of the case by the district attorney’s office as “shameful.”

New York Misconduct may Free Murderer

Breaking News....In a stunning admission, state prosecutors may be forced to free a murderer in New York because of prosecutorial misconduct.

Local NBC affiliate WNBC reports:

A federal judge moved closer Tuesday to freeing a Brooklyn rabbi's convicted killer after state prosecutors admitted that they had withheld evidence during his 1995 murder trial. Federal Judge Dora Irizarry chided the Brooklyn District Attorney's office and over their objections, ordered a rare evidentiary hearing Wednesday that could free Jabbar Collins, 37, and bar prosecutors from retrying him for the rabbi's slaying. "What is troubling is that back in 2006 the DA's office didn't take that extra step," said the judge, criticizing Brooklyn prosecutors for failing to thoroughly investigate defense claims of prosecutorial misconduct years ago. Prosecutors did admit a crucial mistake:  not revealing back in 1995 that a key witness against Collins briefly recanted.  He went on to testify against Collins, who was sentenced to 34 years to life in prison for fatally shooting Rabbi Abraham Pollack during a 1995 robbery in Williamsburg.

Curtailing Crticism of a "Squishy" Law

The dishonest "honest services" law is receiving a lot of bad press.

Now in New York, a federal judge was angered when a defense lawyer attacked the law, verbally insulting it.

The judge ordered comments to be immediately curtailed.

From today's Albany Times-Union:

An attorney for [former New York Senate Majority Leader] Joseph L. Bruno was warned by a federal judge Wednesday that his comments outside the courtroom need to be curtailed.

U.S. District Court Judge Gary L. Sharpe issued an order that Bruno's lead defense attorney, Abbe D. Lowell, explain comments he made to news reporters outside the courthouse on Monday following the final pre-trial conference in the case. The comments came minutes after the judge had cautioned attorneys in the case, for a second time, not to violate court rules regarding public comments.

The judge's order specifically referred to comments by Lowell that the federal honest services law being used to prosecute Bruno is ''squishy.''

Uncharged Acts and Allegations

In 2008, the Rove Republican Racket went after Bear Stearns hedge fund managers Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin for the collapse of a hedge fund which lost $1.4 billion in July 2007 due to securities tied to the subprime loan market.

The government's case, in its second week of trial, has been extremely difficult for the Rove Racket.

The Federal Criminal Defense Blog writes:

The case does not appear to be going as the government had envisioned, with its own witnesses failing to support the allegations in the government's indictment. Even presiding U.S. District Judge Frederic Block has appeared irritated with the prosecution, at one point commenting on the prosecution's introduction of so many documents. Observers have noted that the government's alleged case against Cioffi and Tannin is built upon e-mails whose meaning often changes when placed in their surrounding context. Furthermore, when [a federal] prosecutor...asked [a witness] whether portfolio managers who intentionally give investors false and misleading information were guilty of a crime, Judge Block sustained an objection by the defense and gave the prosecution a stern warning.

So what has the Racket done to save its case? Try to introduce evidence of uncharged acts and allegations!

The Federal Criminal Defense Blog adds:

Additional evidence that the prosecution may be having a more difficult road than expected comes in the form of a letter request by the prosecution to Judge Block to introduce evidence of alleged uncharged acts by Cioffi and Tannin, filed on Sunday. The letter takes issue with Cioffi's and Tannin's counsels' arguments in opening statements to the jury to the effect that it was implausible that Cioffi and Tannin suddenly "went criminal" after the hedge funds had experienced months of positive growth and one flat month. In response, the prosecution seeks to introduce alleged evidence that Cioffi and Tannin allegedly defrauded Busey Bank several months earlier, in December 2006.

Read the entire article here.

Hardball Legal Tactics

When the Rove Republican Racket went after political operatives and other alleged "criminals" though the U.S. Department of Justice, it appears they used hardball tactics.

Two popular hardball tactics during the Bush Administration were 1.) the forced waiver of the attorney-client privilege and the other was 2.) the objection to corporate payment of attorney fees.

Can you imagine that innocent people could not talk with their attorneys in confidence? Can you imagine innocent political operatives forced to pay for their legal fees without the help of their political party or business?

Under these hardball rules, Jim Tobin of Maine would have been forced to pay his multi-million-dollar legal fees on his own, leading to his own bankruptcy and leaving his family in ruins.

According to former Chief Assitant U.S. Attorney of the Eastern District of New York, Paul H. Schoeman, "There has been a steady retreat from those practices resulting about a year ago in a revised set of policies that are now part of the U.S. Attorney's Manual and basically reflect that, in all but extraordinary circumstances, the DOJ will not seek waiver of attorney client privilege and will not hold the failure to waive or the payment of individual defendants' legal expenses against corporations that are trying to cooperate."

Thank Goodness!

Footmarks and Assistant U.S. Attorneys

The Rove Republican Racket has left its footmarks on all U.S. Attorney offices by leaving behind an army of Assistant U.S. Attorneys groomed, influenced, and shaped by the political motivations of the Rove-Bush-Cheney Administration's U.S. Department of Justice.

During the Bush years, in 2007, Paul H. Schoeman (pictured) served as the Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of New York.

In an insightful interview with Metropolitan Corporate Counsel, Schoeman states, "My responsibilities as Chief Assistant were basically to be the number two person in the office and assist the U.S. Attorney in all aspects of running the office and supervising the work of both the criminal division and the civil division. I got exposed to all the different things that were going on in the office."

Supervising the work of the criminal division! Many of these Assistant U.S. Attorneys appear to call the shots on criminal cases.

As readers know, during the Rove-Bush-Cheney years, the U.S. Department of Justice was used to target political enemies primarily from the Democratic Party. From California to Maine, political operatives were dragged through the mud and in some cases thrown in jail.

Many times they were tried twice by ambitious Assistant U.S. Attorneys who failed the first time.