Bernstein's memo -- remember Thomas DiBiagio?
Remember Thomas M. Dibiagio?
He's the Maryland U.S. Attorney who quit in 2004 -- later saying someone threatened him over his pursuit of pubic corruption. He's most famous for being reprimanded by his federal bosses for an internal email in which he "pressed his staff for three 'front-page' corruption indictments before Election Day."
Prosecutors make a living off intercepting the communication of others -- all those fun wiretaps catching criminals and politicians incriminating themselves -- so it should be of no surprise when their own internal communications get leaked.
Baltimore State's Attorney Gregg L. Bernstein gets his reminder in today's Baltimore Sun, where Justin Fenton got hold of his internal emails to his staff about a police misconduct case that the city's top prosecutor had tried, getting two convictions on lesser charges than he had sought, and one acquittal.
In the memo, Bernstein criticizes the lead internal police detective (remember how he said during his campaign that unlike his predecessor, he wouldn't blast cops -- publicly at least), takes a swipe at the judge and jokes that one of his assistant's made him look good.
Here are the highlights of the memo, which can be read in full here:
“The case (how should I put it?) had some issues … Our ‘crack’ IID detective neglected to tell us about recorded interviews of three witnesses that we discovered during the trial. She also began her examination by defense counsel (we certainly did not call her) by denying she had testified in the grand jury. … Michelle told the detective 4 times to read her friggin’ file, which she refused to do. I could go on and on, but I suspect most of you are thinking, ‘Welcome to the State’s Attorney’s Office.”
“Judge Doory (who otherwise ran an excellent trial; very impressive) stated, in essence, that he did not believe police officers were capable of ever being guilty of kidnapping, false imprisonment and assault, because by definition, this is what they do every day (I am not making this up).”
Speaking of two fellow prosecutors who helped with the case:
“Michelle Martin and Paul Pineau did a superb job of making your boss look good (and isn’t that what this is all about?) who was trying his first case as a prosecutor in a long, long time. Hopefully, I did not embarrass those of you who have been doing this for a while.”
Categories: Courts and the justice system
