A federal jury in San Diego convicted 4 of 5 former U.S. naval officers of conspiracy, bribery and fraud on Wednesday, capping a four-month lengthy trial and a decade-long investigation of the worst corruption scandal within the historical past of the Navy.
After deliberating over components of three weeks, jurors convicted former Capts. David Newland, James Dolan and David Lausman and former Cmdr. Mario Herrera of conspiracy to commit bribery, receiving bribes, and conspiracy to commit sincere companies wire fraud attributable to their entanglements with Singapore-based navy contractor Leonard Glenn Francis.
Lausman was additionally convicted of obstruction of justice for destroying a pc laborious drive with paperwork and emails from his time because the commanding officer of the plane provider George Washington.
The jury deadlocked and reached no verdict on costs towards a fifth defendant, former Rear Adm. Bruce Loveless.
The decision ended a prolonged trial — the one one within the sprawling prosecution — that started with opening statements on March 2. The proof jurors had been proven featured reams of paperwork together with emails and invoices, testimony from federal brokers, and testimony from different Navy officers caught within the scandal who had pleaded responsible and agreed to offer proof towards others in trade for a doubtlessly lighter sentence.
Prosecutors laid out what’s now, after practically a decade of “Fats Leonard” indictments and greater than two-dozen responsible pleas, a well-known litany: Francis — nicknamed for his girth — showered presents of fancy meals, prostitutes, high-end lodge rooms and different perks on Navy officers from 2006 by means of 2014.
In return, they did his bidding, resembling offering ship schedules for the Navy’s Seventh Fleet and attempting to steer Navy ships to ports round Southeast Asia that Francis and his firm, Glenn Protection Marin Asia, managed. As soon as there, he gouged the Navy on companies, together with gas, provides, sewage disposal, safety, shore transportation and extra.
Francis admitted to defrauding a minimum of $35 million from the U.S. Navy.
The trial included a rare, three-day-long listening to mid-trial to resolve allegations that federal prosecutors had illegally withheld data from protection attorneys. It was one in all a number of motions that protection attorneys filed throughout the course of the trial contending prosecutors had dedicated misconduct and a mistrial must be declared.
However U.S. District Courtroom Choose Janis Sammartino has not issued any formal rulings on the motions filed by attorneys — uncommon in any trial however particularly so in such a high-profile case. The latest was filed even whereas the jury deliberated, arguing that the federal government had not disclosed {that a} key case agent had made inaccurate statements in a sworn arrest warrant affidavit in a strikingly comparable case a 12 months in the past.
That movement and the others are nonetheless pending, irritating protection attorneys. “Our view is that this case ought to by no means have gone to the jury,” Joseph Mancano, the lawyer for Newland, mentioned throughout a listening to June 22 exterior the presence of the jury. And he criticized how federal prosecutors have dealt with the case.
“The layers of prosecutorial misconduct on this case are mind-boggling,” he instructed the choose.
However, in response, authorities attorneys mentioned that nothing the protection raised within the motions had been sufficient to halt the case. “Not one of the points — individually or collectively — come up to ‘flagrant misbehavior’ or have triggered ‘substantial prejudice’ to the defendants,” prosecutors wrote.
The arguments over the withheld data was not the most important shock within the trial. In a shocking transfer, the scandal’s namesake, Francis, who pleaded responsible in 2015 and met a whole lot of instances with brokers and prosecutors as a part of his cooperation settlement, was not known as to testify.
The federal government gave no rationalization, and certainly it didn’t need to. However there was loads of hypothesis. Some centered on a multi-part podcast Francis recorded that was launched earlier than trial. In hours of recordings he bragged about his affect and attain. At one level — in an excerpt protection attorneys performed a number of instances for the jury — he appeared to throw a cloud over the pending case.
“I can not say my story,” Francis instructed an interviewer in his deep baritone voice, “as a result of if I inform you my story, if I inform them my story, then the federal government hasn’t bought a case towards all these different guys.”
One more reason: Years in the past Francis testified in a deposition for a court-martial of a Navy fighter pilot charged with accepting bribes. Whereas the choose within the case didn’t settle for a protection lawyer’s argument that Francis perjured himself beneath cross-examination, he acquitted the pilot of essentially the most severe costs towards him, which relied on Francis’s testimony.
Additionally not known as to testify was a second key participant, former Cmdr. Jose Sanchez, who has additionally pleaded responsible and, like Francis, is awaiting sentencing after serving to prosecutors.
That meant the case towards the 5 males relied closely on emails, telephone and billing data, and different documentary proof. Different corrupt officers who pleaded responsible, resembling Edmund Aruffo and Stephen Shedd, had been known as to testify, however protection attorneys in closing arguments urged jurors to think about the sizable gap made by Francis’ absence as an indication of the weak spot within the authorities’s case.
Protection attorneys placed on solely a handful of witnesses, attacking the federal government case by way of cross-examinations. In closing arguments that stretched over a number of days, they assailed the federal government’s reliance on cooperating witnesses angling for shorter sentences. They mentioned the emails offered by prosecutors had been offered out of context and insinuated wrongdoing by merely connecting the previous officers to Francis or his firm.
The extremely uncommon mid-trial listening to centered on details about one prostitute. Proper because the trial bought beneath manner, federal brokers had conversations with the lady, named Ynah, who was allegedly paid by Francis to have intercourse with defendant Lausman.
However the girl denied to brokers she had intercourse and mentioned she slept on the sofa within the lodge room of an officer. She additionally admitted she lied to Francis about having intercourse, so she might receives a commission. Ynah declined requests to return to San Diego from the Philippines to testify.
No data on this dialog was given to protection attorneys, which they mentioned violated longstanding authorized obligations of prosecutors to show over data that would assist present a defendant was not responsible. Sammartino, the choose, halted testimony within the trial for a listening to wherein the chief prosecutor on the case, Assistant U.S. Lawyer Mark Pletcher, needed to take the extraordinary step of testifying on the stand to defend his actions.
Ultimately Sammartino did not sanction prosecutors.
The convicted defendants and their attorneys declined to remark after the verdicts had been learn to a virtually packed courtroom, crammed with household and pals of the defendants on one facet and a legion of federal brokers and prosecutors on the opposite.
Thomas O’Brien, the lawyer for Loveless, requested Sammartino to acquit his consumer after the jury was dismissed, arguing the federal government had “thrown every little thing it could actually” towards Loveless and was unable to persuade the jury.
Pletcher objected to that, and Sammartino declined to make a right away ruling.
The U.S. Lawyer’s Workplace issued a quick information launch in regards to the verdict late Wednesday however didn’t touch upon its significance or say whether or not Loveless can be retried.
Exterior of courtroom, O’Brien mentioned the federal government shouldn’t search to retry his consumer. “After 4 months of trial and several other weeks of deliberations the jury didn’t convict Admiral Loveless on any counts,” he mentioned. “This case must be dismissed.”
Sentencing for the 4 males was set for Oct. 11, however a sequence of post-trial motions from protection attorneys are anticipated to be filed earlier than then.
The trial might very properly mark the tip of the sweeping Fats Leonard investigation. Because the indictment on this case was handed down in March 2017, the investigation has slowed down markedly. 4 individuals had been indicted after this case however they every pleaded responsible earlier than trial.
Francis is ready to be sentenced on July 14. Since 2018 he had been residing in a form of home arrest at a secret residential location whereas receiving therapy and take care of medical issues, together with renal most cancers.
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