Law360 – An attorney for one of four former U.S. Navy officials whose bribery convictions were recently overturned will file for an ethics probe of the prosecutors, over their failure to provide the defendants with information that might have aided their defense.
The officers were originally found guilty of taking bribes from Malaysian defense contractor “Fat Leonard” Francis, who testified against them at trial. When it later came to light that imagery of child sexual abuse had been found on the laptops of Francis and another government witness, the defendants complained that they should have been given this information, which they could have used to challenge the credibility of the testimony. A judge agreed and approved a plea deal in which the defendants are only paying token fines. The defense attorney cites the government’s willingness to go along with this as an implicit admission that their prosecutors were guilty of misconduct in withholding this information.
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