Rather than the usual bland press release page, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland is now issuing announcements and other information on a blog maintained by the office. The new site (here) contains the usual announcements of pending cases, and also updates on trials, speeches, etc. Maybe the Southern District of New York, which wins my award for worse public information site for a large district (slow to post and virtually no information about the cases), could pick up a tip or two about making its information a bit more accessible and user friendly. (ph)
Category: Prosecutors
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While high profile prosecutions usually are ascribed to the lead prosecutor (e.g. Ken Starr, Archibald Cox), much of the basic work in investigating and trying a case is done by career prosecutors out of the limelight. The same is true of Special Counsel Patrict Fitzgerald’s office, and Legal Times has an interesting article (available on Law.Com here) giving the background of the various lawyers working on the investigation of the leak of Valerie Plame’s status as a CIA agent. (ph)
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Paul McNulty, the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, will be nominated to the vacant position as Deputy Attorney General, to succeed James Comey, who left in August. Timothy Flanigan, who worked in the White House Counsel’s office, was originally tapped for the position, but withdrew over problems related to his lack of criminal law experience and ties for lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who is under indictment for bank fraud. McNulty has served as United States Attorney since 2001 (biography here), and his office handled high-profile terror prosecutions (e.g., Zacarias Moussaoui) and procurement fraud cases related to the Pentagon (e.g., Darleen Druyan). An AP story (here) discusses the nomination. (ph)
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The Department of Justice’s Hurricane Katrina Fraud Task Force issued a press release (here — through the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas) outlining the focus of the investigatory and prosecutorial effort to address frauds related to disaster relief from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita — and no doubt Hurricane Wilma will be added to the list if it causes significant damage. The Task Force has brought forty cases since early September, not only in districts directly affected by the hurricanes but also as far away as California and Oregon. The types of cases the Task Force is concentrating on are :
- Fraudulent Charities: Cases in which individuals falsely hold themselves out as agents of a legitimate charity, or create a “charity” that is in fact not legitimate;
- Identity Theft: Cases in which the identities of innocent victims are stolen and assumed by criminals who convert the funds of, or otherwise defraud, the victims;
- Government-Benefit Fraud: Cases in which individuals file false applications seeking benefits to which they are not entitled;
- Government-Contract and Procurement Fraud: Cases in which individuals and companies engage in fraud related to federal funds provided for the repair and restoration of infrastructure, businesses, and government agencies in the affected region; and
- Insurance Fraud: Cases in which false or inflated insurance claims are filed.
(ph)
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On Wednesday, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s office put up a website (here) through the Department of Justice that contains documents related to the case, the most recent being an Aug. 27 memorandum from the Deputy Attorney General about supervision of the Special Counsel. The site is still rather barren, with links to documents appointing Fitzgerald, two press statements, and the decision on the reporter’s privilege. A Los Angeles Times story (here) notes that the spokesman for the office cautioned not to read into the decision to launch the site anything about possible decisions to seek indictments, noting that the website was long overdue. It’s awfully hard to resist doing so, however.
Adding fuel to the fire, a Reuters article (here) states that the grand jury investigating the leak of Valerie Plame’s identity as a covert CIA operative met on Friday with two prosecutors from the Special Counsel’s office, but it does not appear that any witnesses were called to testify. As the legal advisers to the grand jury, it is a fair assumption that the prosecutors’ discussion concerned whether the evidence gathered during the investigation meets the requirement to return an indictment: probable cause. Even with that fairly low threshold for an indictment, it is doubtful in a high profile case like this that the Special Counsel would seek an indictment unless there is strong evidence of criminal conduct. (ph)
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Bruce Carton has an interesting post (here) on the Securities Litigation Watch blog noting a number of high-level openings in the securities field at the SEC and Department of Justice. While the Enforcement Division just appointed a new chief of its litigation unit (Luis Mejia), the Commission has not filled the Chief Accountant post, and there are vacancies at the top of the Divisions of Investment Management and Market Regulation. The chairman of PCAOB, William McDonough, is leaving his post at the end of November, and the Fraud Section in the Criminal Division at the DOJ (my old section) has posted for both the Chief and the Deputy Chief for Litigation. And I suspect the number of senior-level openings will increase after the 2006 election. The final two years of an administration usually has significant turnover as people position themselves for the transition to a new administration (regardless of whether there is a change of party, but the turnover is particularly dramatic when a different party wins the Presidency). (ph)
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This isn’t a joke, and it isn’t a light bulb question, it is the unfortunate reality. According to an AP story on ABC News (here) it seems that one of the grand juries looking at a case involving Tom DeLay did not indict him. In total it looks like there were 3 grand juries and 2 issued indictments. It is most likely that the conduct being looked at by these different grand juries was not the same conduct, so an indictment by one does not preclude a no bill by another. Perhaps the most telling part, however, is why was it necessary to have 3 separate grand juries regarding DeLay. (esp)
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Alice Fisher was nominated as the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division in April and approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee in May, but a hold on her nomination by Michigan Senator Carl Levin has stalled the process. According to a Newsweek article (here) in early August, Levin is seeking additional information, apparently including a personal interview with an FBI agent, concerning Fisher’s knowledge of abusive interrogation techniques used on prisoners detained at Guantanamo. While Fisher’s involvement in the entire affair seems modest at best, Levin is involved in a tug-of-war with the Department of Justice over access to the FBI agent, whom Justice interviewed but has refused to make available to the Senator. Being a pawn in that kind of fight often means the nomination will linger while the two sides glare at each other. Even the intercession of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales did not budge Senator Levin.
While the Criminal Division will still operate, the absence of a Senate-approved AAG means that there will be no new initiatives, and some decisions will be postponed pending Fisher’s approval. Moreover, the top levels of Justice do not have others with extensive criminal experience outside of the career prosecutors, who do not have the political capital of a Presidential appointee. Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey has left the Department to become the General Counsel for Lockheed Martin, and his nominated successor, Tim Flanigan, has not come before the Senate for a vote (nor does Flanigan, Attorney General Gonzales’ chief deputy in the White House Counsel’s office, have much criminal experience). Career prosecutor David Margolis, an Associate Deputy Attorney General, will take over Comey’s role overseeing U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation of the leak about Valerie Plame, probably the most politically-sensitive case at the moment in the Department. With the pending Senate consideration of the nomination of John Roberts likely to draw most of the attention over the next few weeks, the question is whether Fisher’s nomination will be freed up or remain in limbo. (ph)
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Corporate Crime Reporter ranks the top ten white collar and corporate prosecutors here. The analysis provided for the selection of these ten individuals is interesting.
How should one rank prosecutors?
Should it be based on guilty verdicts? Clearly it should not be based on "wins" as prosecutors always win, irrespective of the jury verdict, since they are "ministers of justice." (Model Rules of Professional Conduct, Comment)
Should it be based upon number of cases prosecuted? Will that encourage prosecutors to bring worthless prosecutions just to make the top ten list?
Should it be based on the total time received by convicted individuals? Will this cause prosecutors to forget their role of serving society and cause them to start counting numbers?
Again, how should one rank prosecutors? Or, better yet, should one rank prosecutors? By the way, it looks like only a few went to what some might see as "top ten" law schools – or maybe the law school rankings don’t tell it all either.
(esp)
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For those interested in how the Department of Justice’s policy on charging business organizations, known as the Thompson Memo, affects the way in which corporations now have to conduct their business, be sure to check out a series of posts by Paul McGreal on the Corporate Compliance Prof blog for an excellent summary of the issues (posts here in Compliance 101). (ph)
MattBray.net 