Legal professionals for 4 former U.S. Navy officers convicted final summer season in the one case to go to trial within the “Fats Leonard” bribery scandal say their shoppers received an unfair trial marred by a “dizzying array of presidency misconduct.”
In a 343-page submitting, the attorneys need U.S. District Courtroom Choose Janis Sammartino both to wipe out their convictions for fraud, bribery and conspiracy, or dismiss the case towards their shoppers completely. They argue the misconduct was so pervasive that if a brand new trial is ordered, it must be “carried out by completely different prosecutors, from a distinct workplace.”
“In mild of all the pieces that occurred, if the Courtroom imposes any lesser treatment than ordering a brand new trial the prosecutors on this case will proceed to misbehave with impunity, and the message despatched will embolden different prosecutors to do likewise,” the attorneys wrote.
A lot of the alleged misconduct has been argued at size already in briefings and in courtroom, together with a failure by prosecutors to share with protection attorneys exculpatory statements by a prostitute, in addition to undisclosed credibility issues with one of many lead federal brokers in an analogous investigation.
However protection attorneys additionally say prosecutors withheld details about what has change into an explosive a part of the case: the secretive dwelling preparations that Leonard Glenn Francis, the Malaysian protection contractor and mastermind of the scandal, loved for a number of years earlier than he escaped and went on the run in September.
Francis, who was often known as “Fats Leonard” due to his girth, had been dwelling for at the least two years within the dwelling, full with pool and a gardener, below a form of dwelling arrest with an digital monitor and different restrictions on his actions.
He escaped on Sept. 4, and was captured about two weeks later in Venezuela, the place he stays as he seeks asylum and the US tries to extradite him again to San Diego.
Within the movement the attorneys contend they have been led to consider Francis was dwelling in a small house as he recovered from a constellation of medical issues that would not be handled inside the jail system. However someday in mid-2020 he relocated to the expansive mansion in Torrey Highlands.
The dwelling preparations amounted to a rare profit that the federal government prolonged to Francis for his cooperation, the attorneys argue, and should have been disclosed to undermine the credibility of the case towards their shoppers.
The submitting gives new particulars concerning the closing weeks Francis spent in a multimillion-dollar dwelling below an unorthodox “medical furlough” overseen by the courtroom.
The brand new data comes from a lady, Perla Nation, who instructed protection attorneys for former Capt. David Lausman after the trial concluded that she was employed by Francis for a few month starting in August 2022 as a paralegal, working a number of hours a day two or three days per week. It’s unclear why he wanted a paralegal, although Nation mentioned he wanted assist to “set up some paperwork from his case.”
Within the weeks she labored for him, Nation mentioned Francis continuously interacted with others by way of textual content or on-line, although the circumstances of his launch prohibited him from accessing digital units. She mentioned he labored from a room the place entry was managed by some form of digital lock that required a code. The room had a desk which she mentioned was “suffering from medical paperwork, with drugs and drugs.”
Nation mentioned Francis in these closing weeks was despondent about his case and the way it was winding down. Francis escaped about two weeks earlier than he was to be sentenced.
“He was very unhappy over the past week — there have been no different phrases to say unhappy or distraught,” she is quoted saying within the report. “He actually believed there was a political agenda behind his incarceration. We had a whole lot of dialog about that subject — he was not agreeing with the way in which his case was going.”
The house had a gentle stream of tourists, together with a number of of his youngsters, an assistant, and a lady she described as his girlfriend who additionally had a son.
Whereas the courtroom’s Pretrial Companies Division was overseeing the medical furlough and periodically checked on Francis, he was obligated to pay for his personal round the clock safety. Nation couldn’t say a lot concerning the guard, who was instructed to remain in a storage as a result of Francis mentioned he didn’t need the guard coming into the house. She mentioned she noticed the again of his head a few instances.
The week earlier than Francis fled she instructed protection attorneys she was working 14 hours a day, clearing the house of most of its contents. By the night earlier than he escaped, she mentioned all the pieces had been cleared from the house, despatched to a 3rd occasion to resell. The exception — Francis’ personal room, which she mentioned remained untouched.
Within the notes of the interview, Nation indicated Francis could have believed he wouldn’t be going to jail. She instructed the protection attorneys: “He needed to downsize as a result of it was so going to be costly and possibly transfer to a smaller place. He needed to maneuver to a different house afterwards.”
Nation didn’t reply to a message searching for remark.
Francis confronted as a lot as 25 years in jail. However he had cooperated extensively with the federal government since simply after his arrest in 2013 and after pleading responsible to bribery, fraud and conspiracy in 2015, feeding prosecutors and brokers with reams of data on others concerned within the scandal that led on to quite a few different prosecutions.
Due to that help, prosecutors would possible have requested for some form of discount in his sentence. Along with his escape, that’s now not the case.
The prolonged movement comes a few yr after the prolonged trial towards former officers who had served within the Navy’s seventh Fleet. A jury convicted former Capts. David Newland, James Dolan and Lausman and former Cmdr. Mario Herrera of conspiracy to commit bribery, receiving bribes, and conspiracy to commit trustworthy providers wire fraud as a result of their relationships with Francis.
Lausman was additionally convicted of obstruction of justice for destroying a pc laborious drive with paperwork and emails. The jury deadlocked and reached no verdict on costs towards a fifth defendant, former Rear Adm. Bruce Loveless, and prosecutors later determined to not retry him.
Moreover the secrecy surrounding Francis’ home arrest, the movement particulars a number of different points that got here up throughout the trial contending prosecutors improperly withheld data that would have helped the protection. These included not telling protection attorneys about statements by a prostitute named Ynah, who denied having intercourse with Lausman one evening regardless of prosecutors contending she had. Sammartino ultimately discovered that not telling protection attorneys amounted to “flagrant misconduct” by Assistant U.S. Legal professional Mark Pletcher, the lead prosecutor within the case.
The main target of a lot of the movement facilities on a significant witness, Agent Cordell DeLaPena of the Protection Felony Investigative Companies. The attorneys say he was evasive and deliberately deceptive throughout the days he spent on the stand.
Additionally they elevate a problem with a second Navy contracting bribery case DeLaPena labored on, involving the corporate Multinational Logistic Companies and its chief govt, Frank Rafaraci. He was charged in September 2021 with bribery of a Navy official and defrauding the federal government out of at the least $50 million by means of inflated invoices between 2011 and 2018 — a scheme much like Francis’.
In an affidavit for the arrest, DeLaPena made a sequence of incorrect statements concerning the fraudulent billing, in keeping with courtroom information in Rafaraci’s case filed in federal courtroom in Washington, D.C. When protection attorneys for Rafaraci complained the statements have been incorrect, attorneys for the Division of Justice agreed in a movement collectively filed with the protection in March 2022 that the statements have been “factually inaccurate.”
The Justice Division took the weird step of then asking a federal decide to not solely strike the criticism, but in addition take away completely from the official docket the incorrect affidavit. However the decide within the case declined to take away the affidavit and as a substitute ordered the incorrect paragraphs to be redacted.
The protection attorneys say that prosecutors hid this data throughout the San Diego trial, and it might have been used to undermine DeLaPena’s testimony and his credibility. However their whole argument shouldn’t be recognized as a result of prosecutors requested Sammartino to order all materials associated to the Rafaraci case be filed below seal, and he or she agreed.
Nonetheless, within the newest submitting the protection attorneys discuss with what could also be at subject. They wrote that whereas prosecutors initially described the errors within the Rafaraci case as trustworthy errors, the data they’ve since acquired that’s below seal “replicate deliberate, persistent mendacity or near-total incompetence.”
A lawyer for Rafaraci didn’t reply to a message searching for touch upon the submitting. Courtroom information present that Rafaraci has been offering data to the federal government, which is “actively investigating.” He has not been sentenced after pleading responsible to at least one bribery cost a yr in the past.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Legal professional’s Workplace in San Diego declined to touch upon the submitting. Prosecutors are as a result of file their response to the protection submitting April 28.
This story initially appeared in The San Diego Union-Tribune.
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