More American Justice

In a stunning twist in a long-running Medicare fraud case, both the Miami U.S. Attorney’s office and the FBI stand accused of spying on a defendant’s lawyer by illegally and secretly obtaining copies of confidential defense documents.

Court papers filed last week by attorneys for Dr. Salo Schapiro contend the secret practice was not the action of “just one rogue agent or prosecutor.” Rather, it was apparently an “office-wide policy” of both the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI that’s gone on for “at least 10 years.”

[...]

The government’s Thursday night response acknowledged that Imaging Universe did supply the FBI with duplicate CDs of what the company had copied for Schapiro’s defense team, but said the discs “were never requested by any agent, prosecutor or anyone else on the government’s behalf.”

  Florida Bulldog

Seriously? That's your rebuttal? They just, for some reason we can't fathom, gave those copies to us, and as long as we had them, of course we read them.

Prosecutors Hayes and Miller also stated that they were unaware of the duplicate CDs until an FBI agent disclosed their existence in late April. They said that when they found out they immediately told “Montero to stop and began an internal inquiry.”

Oh, excuse me. You didn't know you had them. You never read them, of course, and when you found out they were being given to you, you immediately demanded the gift horse desist.

Arteaga-Gomez phoned Montero on April 25 to ask who had told him to provide copies of the CDs to the government. Montero, the motion says, answered that an “agent” told his office manager to do it. “Mr. Montero then stated that he had been providing to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the past 10 years duplicate copies of the discovery documents selected by defense counsel in other cases.”

[...]

Montero added that both his old company, Xpediacopy, and Imaging Universe had done it.

If so, the alleged government misconduct spanned the administrations of three Miami U.S. Attorneys – Alex Acosta, who served from 2005-2009, Jeffrey Sloman acting U.S. Attorney from 2009-2010 and Wifredo Ferrer, who took over in May 2010.

[...]

Nova Southeastern University constitutional law professor Robert Jarvis was skeptical of the defense’s sensational claims, but said that if the allegations prove true it could upend hundreds of criminal cases, free untold defendants and potentially result in criminal charges against government officials responsible for violating defendants’ rights.

“This opens a huge can of worms,” Jarvis said. “It’s potentially catastrophic for the government and I would think that the [U.S.] Attorney General would be swooping in on this. There are 95 judicial districts. If it happened in this office, you have to wonder if it’s happening in any others.”

Yes, you do, don't you?

I also have to wonder why you're not hiring attorneys capable of winning cases without resorting to illegal activity.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.