How the mighty have fallen. Carmen Ortiz who enjoyed a Hollywood-like existence as the US attorney in Boston has tripped up and the gang is piling-up on her. Margery Eagan took a shot at her and now I see Dave Boeri and Dave Frank have followed up. I’m tempted to say welcome to the club.
I have criticized Carmen Ortiz based on several things she has done. I thought she was brutal in her recommendation of a sentence for Catherine Greig; was heartless in trying to steal the motel from Russ Caswell; and lacked discretion in bringing RICO charges against the probation officers who were merely doing the bidding of judges and legislators. I suggested her actions in the handling of the Aaron Swartz case a continuation of her lack of judgment.
Yesterday I wrote about what I thought was a solid performance by some of the assistants in her office. It so happened I did this in response to Eagan’s criticism of her. I tend not to like pile-ons. So seeing the new article by Boeri and Frank “Ortiz Under Fire.” I tended to be skeptical, especially since they were quoting some criminal defense lawyers, and my instincts were to defend Ortiz.
One thing that I have learned is that if defense lawyers are happy with the prosecutors then the prosecutors are probably not doing their jobs. Whenever a defense lawyer would tell me about what a great kid one of our young assistant’s was I always figured the lawyer had just taken the kid for a bath. That happened on occasion since the younger ADAs never had the experience of the criminal defense lawyers and were often bamboozled by them. It didn’t really matter that much because they weren’t handling the serious cases so society did not suffer by them having had their pockets picked.
When the criminal defense lawyers called me to complain about an assistant I usually knew that assistant was doing a good job. You have to understand the mind of a criminal defense lawyer, for the most part everyone is guilty except his or her client and they will always offer up other people, often the victim, the prosecutor should have charged.
So I expected to come away thinking more favorably about Ortiz. That was not to be the case.
One lawyer mentioned was Tracy Miner, who defended FBI Agent John Connolly. I know Tracy. She’s an excellent lawyer and not a bomb thrower. She never complained about anything in the Connolly case so for her to express dissatisfaction caught my attention. The other lawyer quoted is Brien O’Connor. He also seems quite competent considering his clients but I do not personally know him. They talked about dealing with Ortiz’s office in three cases: two involved lawyers and one a pharmaceutical company. What is unusual is that these were cases where their clients got acquitted so that piqued my interest.
A common theme running through their complaints against Ortiz was that she never should have indicted their clients, her staff seems to run her, the staff is stone deaf to any attempts to resolve the cases, and at the time of trial her prosecutors were poorly prepared.
Boeri and Frank do an excellent job setting out these assertions, backing them up and overcoming my skepticism that they were involved in a gang-up or were processing the usual defense lawyer complaints.
I came away from reading their article more convinced than ever that Ortiz is running a bad office just after having given her some praise. In Miner’s case, Miner asked the main witness against her client to identify the other participants in the alleged scheme. He responded something to the effect, “I’m not going to rat on my friends, honey.” This has shades of the case against Whitey where Weeks is telling half-truths and Martorano is hiding the identity of other criminals. A former AUSA John Pucci said of this: “If the witness in prep won’t answer the questions, you’ve got a significant problem on your hands, and you got to solve it. But the solution isn’t to go to trial and let him get on the stand and refuse to testify. That’s not justice, and that’s not the answer to that problem.”
We see the prosecutors of Whitey have the same problem. They are going to trial with witnesses who are lying and refusing to identify other participants in their crimes. The Weeks matter is obvious. He says he went to murder Halloran and Donohue with Whitey and a person he didn’t know (how many people do you know go off to murder people with strangers?) because he wore a ski mask and he never asked who it was or heard who it was in any conversation with Whitey thereafter. That is aside from there being at least one civilian witness who said the person did not wear a ski mask. Add to that Weeks has himself driving two different cars to the murder.
Whitey may be a bad guy but it doesn’t justify using people you know are lying or hiding things to convict him.
But that’s not my real problem with Ortiz. Nor is it that it seems the cops are running her office. Tomorrow I’ll tell you what reading the article by Dave Boeri and Dave Frank made me realize about her.