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Move Over Ted Stevens, Here Comes Dr. Jordan: DOJ’s Next Brady Scandal?
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Move Over Ted Stevens, Here Comes Dr. Jordan: DOJ’s Next Brady Scandal?
[All of the facts in this post come from the 11th Circuit opinion in United States v. Ignasiak, publicly available on the 11th Circuit’s website at http://www.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/searchdate.php or from PACER.]
Arthur Jordan used a counterfeit badge and posed as an on-duty U.S. Marshal in order to carry firearms onto commercial airplanes while on personal travel. He did this nine times. According to the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, Jordan’s “criminal conduct” resulted in “multiple violations” of 18 U.S.C. Sections 912 and 1001 and 49 U.S.C. Section 46505, and “could have been charged as felonies.”
But Jordan wasn’t even charged with a misdemeanor. He got pretrial diversion from the South Dakota U.S. Attorney’s Office, paid $2,000.00, and agreed never to carry firearms on an airplane again, except while on official business.
Jordan is not your everyday citizen. He is none other than Dr. Arthur Jordan, who goes around the country testifying as an expert for the U.S. Government in Health Care Fraud/Controlled Substances Act prosecutions against pain management physicians. He charges $300 per hour and, during his November 2008 testimony in U.S. v. Ignasiak, claimed to have earned around $30,000.00 as a government expert up to that point in time. Dr. Jordan was the key government expert against Robert Ignasiak in the latter’s criminal jury trial, testifying for almost three days. (Roy Black was lead defense counsel during the trial.)
The 11th Circuit reversed Ignasiak’s convictions in January of this year, based on Crawford/Confrontation Clause violations. [See my earlier post here. See also 200910596[1]).
But there’s much more to the story. Given its reversal, and its finding that the evidence was sufficient, the 11th Circuit declined to address the other issues raised by Ignasiak on appeal–except for one.
You see, none of the Ignasiak defense attorneys knew during the trial about Dr. Jordan’s “criminal conduct” or his South Dakota pretrial diversion agreement. Several months after the Ignasiak guilty verdicts, the government filed the Government’s In Camera Notice to the Court (“Notice”). The Notice, and an accompanying affidavit, were filed under seal. This post-trial Notice revealed Dr. Jordan’s conduct and his South Dakota pretrial diversion deal to Judge Lacey Collier and Robert Ignasiak’s defense team for the first time. The government requested that the Notice be kept under seal, in order to protect Dr. Jordan’s privacy interests.
In the Notice, the government also argued that its prior failure to disclose the Arthur Jordan impeachment material did not violate Brady/Giglio, because the Ignasiak prosecutor had not personally known about Dr. Jordan’s conduct, or the South Dakota pretrial diversion agreement, during the Ignasiak trial.
Judge Collier summarily granted the government’s request to seal the Notice, despite defense opposition. The defense filed a New Trial Motion based on the alleged Brady/Giglio violations. Much of that litigation was conducted under seal. A few documents are publicly available, but they are heavily redacted. The defense lost its New Trial Motion as well.
The 11th Circuit did not decide whether the government’s failure to discover and disclose Dr. Jordan’s conduct, before or during trial, violated Brady/Giglio. But it did order the government’s Notice unsealed and, through its opinion, disclosed Dr. Jordan’s “criminal conduct” and pretrial diversion deal to the bench and bar. This was an admirable public service.
The 11th Circuit was clearly displeased by DOJ’s effort to shield Dr. Jordan. As the Court succinctly put it:
“Perhaps ironically, by arguing that there was no Brady violation in this case because the AUSA prosecuting Ignasiak was unaware of Dr. Jordan’s history, it is actually the government that most persuasively highlights the value in unsealing the Notice. Indeed, should the Notice remain sealed, the significant likelihood is that in the next CSA prosecution in which Dr. Jordan testifies as an expert, both the prosecuting AUSA and the defense counsel will again be unaware of the highly relevant impeachment evidence contained in the Notice. And in that case, as in this one, should the truth ever come to light, the government could again point to its own ignorance and claim immunity from Brady error. Stated this way, we would have expected the government to condemn, rather than condone, such a problematic outcome.”
In light of the 11th Circuit’s opinion, several questions present themselves.
1. Who Protected Jordan? In other words, why did he get what looks on its face like a very favorable pretrial diversion deal from the South Dakota U.S. Attorney’s Office? Who approved the deal and who within DOJ was informed about it? How long did the diversionary period last? Was it unusually short and, if so, why?
2. Who Revealed or Failed to Reveal Jordan’s Conduct and Pretrial Diversion Deal? The Ignasiak prosecution team, from the Northern District of Florida, purportedly did not know about Dr. Jordan’s “criminal conduct” or his South Dakota pretrial diversion agreement until after trial. Why not? The South Dakota U.S. Attorney’s Office is part of the DOJ and the U.S. Attorney network, and Dr. Jordan is fairly well known as a government expert in pain clinic cases. It is difficult to imagine that South Dakota prosecutors were not aware of Dr. Jordan’s ongoing role as a government expert. Assuming that they were aware, why didn’t this raise any red flags, and who, if anyone, made the decision to quarantine this obvious Brady/Giglio material? If this is a cover-up, how high did it go? Was Jordan’s pretrial diversion completed before Ignasiak’s trial? Was it still in force when Jordan traveled, as he surely must have, to Pensacola for trial prep? Wouldn’t Jordan need permission from pretrial services in order to travel to Pensacola, and wouldn’t he have to tell pretrial service the purpose of his trip? Did the South Dakota U.S. Attorney’s Office know of the trip and its purpose? If so, why didn’t it notify N.D. Florida?
3. Why Did N.D. Florida Try to Seal and Suppress Dr. Jordan’s “Criminal Conduct” and Pretrial Diversion Deal? As the 11th Circuit correctly noted, the government’s effort to seal its own Notice had the effect of shielding Dr. Jordan’s misconduct from other federal prosecutorial offices. Even assuming, as the government argued in Ignasiak, that an AUSA in one federal district has no obligation to obtain Brady/Giglio from a fellow AUSA in another federal district, what possible justification is there for the active effort to suppress Brady/Giglio material that occurred post-trial in Ignasiak?
4. What Subsequent Prosecutions Have Been Sullied by the Ignasiak Brady/Giglio Suppression? Did the Florida AUSAs ask Dr. Jordan about any upcoming trials Jordan may have had on tap with other U.S. Attorney Offices? If so, did the N.D. Florida make an attempt to tell the other offices about Dr. Jordan? It unquestionably had an ethical duty to do so. What has been done since the Ignasiak opinion to look into this issue?
5. Does the DOJ Really Believe that Brady/Giglio Material Known Only to a Federal Prosecutor in South Dakota is not Brady/Giglio Material in any Other Federal District? What duty does DOJ impose upon its federal prosecutors to tell prosecutors in other federal districts about Brady/Giglio problems with testifying agents and expert witnesses? If there is no policy in this area, why not?
6. How Could This Happen? More to the point, how could this happen post-Stevens? The government filed its Notice in Ignasiak six months after DOJ moved to dismiss the Stevens Indictment with prejudice and six months after Judge Emmet Sullivan ordered his own investigation of Brady/Giglio violations. Apparently AG Holder’s message fell on some deaf ears. And I guess the N.D. Florida never thought to re-examine its position, after the DOJ issued, to much fanfare, the Ogden Memo in early 2010. Even now, after the 11th Circuit’s pointed comments, the government has not voluntarily moved to unseal the Notice, or the motions and responses from the New Trial Motion, in the Ignasiak case. Why not?
It is extremely difficult for me to believe that either AG Eric Holder or Assistant AG Lanny Breuer knew about the Arthur Jordan issue prior to last month’s Ignasiak opinion. And therein lies the problem. Even an Attorney General and Criminal Division Chief publicly committed to rooting out Brady/Giglio abuses could not prevent the Arthur Jordan debacle.
What is the real lesson here? That prosecutors can’t be trusted to make their own judgments about what is or is not exculpatory and material under Brady/Giglio. Disclosure must be the norm.
DOJ has done everything in its power to prevent meaningful statutory reform of Fed.R.Crim.App.16 and federal criminal discovery procedures. DOJ says that it can be trusted to prevent Brady/Giglio violations from occurring. The Ted Stevens prosecution is Exhibit 1 in the argument against DOJ. Now we have Exhibit 2. His name is Dr. Arthur Jordan.