Prosecutorial Misconduct In Florida Could Be Massive

It really has turned into a bad couple of days for government prosecutors. First, we had the revelations about the state Attorneys General in Florida and Texas dropping their investigations of Trump University and suddenly receiving campaign donations from Trump-related entities. And now it appears that the US Attorney’s office in Miami has received CD copies of all defense attorneys’ work product gleaned from discovery documents copied at a local copy shop. And all this has been happening since 2006, for the last 10 years!  Apparently an “agent” came into the copy shop owned by Ignacio Montero and told the office manager to forward all copies of discovery documents that were copied by defense attorneys.  The US Attorney’s office had required defense attorney to use that copy shop in order to obtain discovery documents.  The “agent” turns out to have been FBI agent, Deanne Lindsey, who worked in the US Attorney’s office.  Obviously, having prior knowledge of the areas of the discovery documents that defense attorneys are focused on certainly makes preparing for the prosecution much easier. The revelation came about in connection with a long-running Medicare fraud case. In a motion filed last week in that case, defense counsel states, “[c]overtly cloning defense counsel’s work-product to obtain a tactical advantage is nothing short of ‘shocking to the universal sense of justice’ mandated by the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment”. Of course, the US Attorney’s office is claiming that it was unaware that it was actually receiving these copies and did not use them in any way. But, according to Kevin Drum, Lindsey has admitted to using these copied documents in at least four occasions to help prepare expert witnesses.

It really would boggle the mind to see prosecutorial malfeasance on such a widespread and egregious level if, in fact, it turns out that the US Attorney had been using these copies to help prepare cases for the last 10 years. And, if it does turn out to be true, there are probably hundreds, if not thousands, of cases that would be impacted. It would make the most recent outrageous scandal of police and prosecutor misconduct in Orange County, California pale in comparison.

Let’s hope that the misconduct in the Miami US Attorney’s office really only does relate to the four cases mentioned earlier.  But for far too long, prosecutors have abused their substantial powers with little fear of accountability. Until prosecutors have some fear of potentially long prison sentences, I’m afraid we will see this type of malfeasance occurring again and again.