Each year, NAFUSA recognizes an Assistant U.S. Attorney for outstanding performance through the J. Michael Bradford Memorial Award. The award is named after J. Michael Bradford, who served as a U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Texas from 1994 to 2001. Bradford, who died in 2003, had a distinguished career in public service, including successfully defending the government against lawsuits stemming from the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian’s compound in Waco, Texas. NAFUSA annually solicits nominations from current U.S. Attorneys for the Bradford Award. Typically, the recipient has handled a significant investigation and prosecution or series of prosecutions that has had a significant impact and merits special recognition.
Once again, a number of exceptional nominations were made by U.S. Attorneys around the country. The Michael Bradford Award Committee was chaired by NAFUSA Vice President Doug Jones. Its members included Karen Hewitt, Hal Hardin, Richard Roper, and Neil MacBride. This year, the Board voted to give the award to AUSA Adam L. Braverman of the Southern District of California, who was nominated by United States Attorney Laura Duffy, who wrote: “AUSA Braverman has become a nationally recognized expert in developing creative methods to investigate and prosecute the highest levels of the Sinaloa Cartel.” Braverman will be honored at the San Diego conference.
The other nominees were:
George S. Cardona, CD of CA
AUSA Cardona was the lead AUSA in the FIRREA litigation against Standard & Poor’s rating Services for fraudulently inflating ratings of Residential Mortgage Backed Securities and Collaterallized Debt Obligations resulting in a $1.375 billion settlement.
Grant Rabenn, ED of CA
AUSA Rabenn has led the Central California Financial Crimes Task Force. In that role he developed an innovative approach to analyzing Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) to develop criminal investigations with particular emphasis on public corruption, money laundering and drug offense. He successfully prosecuted a number of significant cases, including one involving an FBI supervisory agent, using the SARs analysis.
Lois A. Foster-Sterrs, SD of FL
AUSA Foster-Steers prosecuted some the district’s most important fraud cases included five individuals in an $8,000,000 mortgage fraud scheme that targeted the Haitian-American community and the president and CFO of a south Florida company that defrauded investors of $60-$70 million for their personal use.
Mary Jane Stewart and Bill Toliver, ND of GA
AUSAs Stewart and Toliver were nominated for their efforts in implementing and improving the training program for new AUSAs and SAUSAs. All new AUSAs written work is reviewed and their court appearances personally supervised. They provided weekly lectures on various topics by experienced AUSAs and guest experts as well as weekly discussion groups designed to encourage AUSAs to share experiences that benefit the entire office.
Randall E. Kromm, District of MA
AUSA Kromm was nominated for his outstanding work and success in numerous appellate cases including among others the conviction and life sentence for James “Whitey” Bulger, the conviction of an individual for the arson of a predominantly African-American church in Springfield and the appeal brought by a news reporter of the district court’s erroneous sealing of a number of materials at the request of defense counsel.
Matthew R. Molten, District of Nebraska
AUSA Molten was nominated for his efforts in coordinating the investigation and RICO prosecution of two groups of Crisp gang members in Omaha, including defendants who the Omaha Police Department has described as the “who’s who” of violent gang members in Omaha. This investigation and prosecution is ongoing.
Louis E. Valencia, District of New Mexico
AUSA Valencia was nominated for his extensive contributions to the USAO in New Mexico including the extradition and 2015 conviction of Francisco Melgar-Cabrerra, his brother Jose and two other Salvadoran nationals on charges of armed robbery, Hobbs Act and felony murder. The case represented the first time that Salvadoran nationals were successfully extradited to the United States.
Doug Squires, SD of Ohio
AUSA Squires has been the lead public corruption AUSA in the SD of Ohio since 2009. In 2015 he successfully prosecuted a charter school kickback scheme in which the school superintendent and board members bilked taxpayers out of ore than $500,000 disguise as consulting fees. He also orchestrated the first successful extradition of a defendant, a former Ohio Deputy Treasurer, from Pakistan, which resulted in the defendant’s conviction on bribery charges.
Ernest Gonzalez, EDof TX
Beginning in 2010 AUSA and a team of federal, state and local law enforcement agents targeted Dallas area Los Zetas Cartel distributor Jose Vasquez and in his network. The investigation ultimately resulted in 28 indictments of 157 individuals that dismantled a drug organization that had been responsible for annually importing over 60 tons of cocaine into the U.S.
Michael Collyer, ND of Ohio
AUSA Collyer is the healthcare fraud coordinator and Deputy Chief of the Major Fraud and Corruption unit in the ND of Ohio. Last year he successfully prosecuted Dr. Harold Persuade, a renowned cardiologist, for performing medically unnecessary catheterizations, tests and stent insertions as part of a scheme to defraud Medicare and other insurers of nearly $6M. He also secured on appeal the conviction of a violent drug dealer for the arson murder of eight children and one adult at a sleepover birthday party in 2005.
Bill Campbell, WD of KY
AUSA Campbell was nominated for his efforts in successfully completing a False claims Act case filed in 1999 against Lockheed Martin for failing to identify and report hazardous waste produced and stored at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant and that it failed to properly handle and dispose of the waste. After 17 years of hard fought litigation Lockheed agreed to pay $5M to resolve the case.
James McGovern, ED of NY
AUSA McGovern served in the ED of NY for 11 years after serving 5 years in the District of Columbia office, repeatedly distinguishing himself prosecuting high profile hedge fund managers for securities fraud and insider trading while also prosecuting crimes of violence. He served the ED of NY by supervising the Business and Securities Fraud Section before finishing his career as Chief of the Criminal Division. He was described by US Attorney Robert Capers as representing “the very best of the Department of Justice” and a “model of intelligence, professionalism and fairness.”
NAFUSA members James Brady and Rich Rossman, joined by former U.S. Attorney Michael Dettmer, have authored an OpEd in the Detroit News on October 18, 2106, urging Michigan local prosecutors to follow the mandate of the United States Supreme Court.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled in Montgomery v Louisiana that people serving mandatory life without parole sentences (LWOP) for crimes committed as children must be reviewed and given an opportunity for release if they can demonstrate rehabilitation. Montgomery reinforced the 2012 ruling in Miller v Alabama that those sentences imposed on minors as if they were adults, “pos[e] too great a risk of disproportionate punishment” and must be limited to that “rare juvenile offender” who is incapable of reform.
The rulings do not mean that those youth must be set free. Instead, they require states to assess who the youth have become and provide them an opportunity to demonstrate their rehabilitation through a rigorous parole board review, stating “Allowing those offenders to be considered for parole ensures that juveniles whose crimes reflected only transient immaturity—and who have since matured—will not be forced to serve a disproportionate sentence in violation of the Eighth Amendment…Those prisoners who have shown an inability to reform will continue to serve life sentences. The opportunity for release will be afforded to those who demonstrate the truth of Miller’s central intuition—that children who commit even heinous crimes are capable of change.”
…most Michigan prosecutors are not following the spirit and letter of the law. They are not adhering to the Court’s warning that only the rare youth warranted a LWOP sentence and are conveniently ignoring the fact that the vast majority of youth have been rehabilitated. Eighty-five percent of those serving LWOP sentences have been assigned the lowest security level allowed by prison officials. Officials assess the security risk level of each inmate from Level 1 (lowest risk) to 5. Those serving LWOP enter at Level 4 and, depending on their behavior, can move to a higher or lower risk level but cannot go below a Level 2. When 85% behaved well enough in prison to be at Level 2, you might think they are the ones the Supreme Court had in mind when it wrote “that children who commit even heinous crimes are capable of change” and deserve the “opportunity for release”.
While thirty-eight states abolished juvenile LWOP or have less than 5 people serving that sentence, Michigan has the second highest number of people serving LWOP (363). That’s partially because Michigan sentences children as young as 14 and those that never fired a weapon. Where other states follow Supreme Court rulings and develop data-driven policies, Michigan sidesteps rulings and ignores data and facts. And spends money doing so. Michigan’s top prosecutor spent taxpayer resources unsuccessfully fighting Miller and Montgomery and now county prosecutors are willing to spend millions more to keep those youth who have long since been rehabilitated in prison.
As former U.S. Attorneys, we would have expected Michigan prosecutors to understand Montgomery’s central tenet that children are uniquely capable of growth and maturation and must be able to demonstrate their rehabilitation. Instead, too many prosecutors are focusing on the crime committed by a troubled adolescent without exercising the judgement to recognize whether the adult before them today has rehabilitated himself. The first responsibility of a prosecutor in criminal litigation is to see that in each case, justice is done. In failing to exercise a case by case review pursuant to the mandates of Miller and Montgomery, Michigan prosecutors not only fail our justice system, they fail all of us, the citizens of the State of Michigan.
Rich Rossman
See related editorial in the September 10, 2016, New York Times: Michigan Prosecutors Defy Supreme Court; http://nyti.ms/2cAbWoW and article from Detroit Free Press: After 50 years in prison, juvenile-lifer may see freedom within months. http://on.freep.com/2d5LhCM
Four former U.S. Attorneys from the Western District of Washington have filed an amicus brief in support of Microsoft Corp.’s lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice regarding government searches of customer email. Microsoft’s complaint seeks to strike down a law that prevents the company, and others like it, from timely informing its customers when the government seeks their data.
The former U.S. Attorneys joining the brief are: Jeffrey Sullivan (who was USA from 2007 to 2009); NAFUSA member John McKay (2001 to 2007); Kate Pflaumer (1993 to 2001); and NAFUSA Foundation President Mike McKay (1989 to 1993). They were joined by Charles Mandigo, who was the FBI Special Agent in Charge in Seattle from 1999 to 2003.
In their brief, the former federal law enforcement officials observed they have “a combined 80 years of real-life experience fulfilling their obligation to keep the public safe while operating within the bounds of the Constitution. They have a unique perspective on how to achieve the balance between public safety and personal liberty, particularly with respect to government searches and seizures of private information.” They argued that “law enforcement can function effectively—even in the cloud—while following the Fourth Amendment’s requirement of notice to individuals whose private information has been searched.”
As reported by The Seattle Times, all of the former officials have experience seeking secrecy orders but are concerned about the increasing use of the orders.
John McKay
“Because of the nature of the cloud, the government has gotten lazy and is no longer making specific showings of need as to why secrecy orders should be granted,” John McKay told the Times
McKay is now in private practice at Davis Wright Tremaine, which is representing Microsoft in the case, but his involvement in the brief was in his personal capacity, he said.
NAFUSA member Tim Purdon will represent the Standing Rock Sioux tribal leaders who have been sued by Dakota Access LLC in federal court in Bismarck, North Dakota, for protesting the pipeline construction. As reported on August 29, NAFUSA member Bill Leone is representing Dakota Access in the related litigation in federal court in Washington, DC where the tribe is suing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and Dakota Access is an intervenor.
The tribe is protesting the pipeline’s route passing through ancestral lands, threatening burial grounds, sacred sites and other historical significant areas. The Bismarck complaint alleges the tribal leaders tried to block Dakota Access from entering and exiting the construction site. U.S. District Judge Daniel Hovland granted a temporary restraining order against the tribal leaders and others. A hearing is set for September 8 to determine if a preliminary injunction should issue.
Purdon served as the U.S. Attorney for the North Dakota until last year when he resigned and is now a partner in the Bismarck office of Robbins Kaplan, where he is co-chair of the American Indian Law and Policy Group.
Law 360 reported on August 24, 2016 Sioux Tribe Says ‘Cultural Survival’ At Stake In Pipeline Row, that “the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe urged a D.C. federal judge to block construction on the $3.8 billion crude oil pipeline slated to run through what it considers the tribe’s ancestral lands, calling the Dakota Access Pipeline a threat to its ‘cultural survival’ that was not adequately reviewed by the federal government before its approval”.
The tribe urged U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg to grant a preliminary injunction saying “it was important to hear from tribe members themselves about the importance of the various sites.”
Law 360 reported that the tribe argued that the pipeline’s route passes through ancestral lands, threatening burial grounds, sacred sites and other historically significant areas. The cultural surveys done for the project were done by out-of-state consultants and without the participation of the tribe, it said.
During the hearing, NAFUSA member William J. Leone of Norton Rose Fulbright US LLP, an attorney for intervenor defendant Dakota Access, insisted that those surveys were completed by “qualified archeologists” and subsequently shared with the tribes.
That the surveys were completely unsupervised is “simply not true,” Leone said.
Leone said it would be “horribly unfair” to the developers, laborers and their families to issue an injunction and “change the rules” at the last minute.
David’s wife, Debby, and his daughter, Cheri, will attend the San Diego conference as honored guests of NAFUSA. David, who passed away on July 12, 2016, was scheduled to be a our luncheon speaker on his 51 years at Justice. Deborah Daniels shared a recent Margolis obituary from The Week.
As is our custom, an American flag was flown over Main Justice on August 19, 2016, as the request of NAFUSA. It will be presented to Debby and Cheri at the October conference. It represents the high regard in which David was held by his colleagues.
Former NAFUSA President Jim Robinson died six years ago on August 6, 2010. The DOJ Criminal Division remembered Jim in This Week in the Criminal Division Bulletin (August 22,2016).
SPOTLIGHT ON JAMES K. ROBINSON
James K. Robinson served as Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division from 1998 to 2001.
Mr. Robinson was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1943. He graduated from Michigan State University and earned a law degree from Wayne State University in Detroit in 1968. Mr. Robinson then clerked for Judge George Edwards of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He subsequently became an associate at a Detroit law firm and later a partner at another, where he specialized in litigation.
In 1975, Mr. Robinson began service on the five-member committee of the National Conference of Bar Examiners that drafts the evidence questions for the Multistate Bar Exam. In 1977—at the age of 33—he was named United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, which had one of the heaviest caseloads in the nation at that time. In 1981, Mr. Robinson returned to his Detroit law firm, Honigman, Miller, Schwartz & Cohn. While in private practice, he chaired the committee that drafts the Michigan Rules of Evidence and he co-authored a three-volume treatise and a courtroom handbook on the rules of evidence.
Mr. Robinson was named Dean and Professor of Law at the Wayne State University Law School in 1993. That same year, Chief Justice William Rehnquist appointed him to the Advisory Committee on the Federal Rules of Evidence.
In August 1995, Assistant Attorney General Jo Ann Harris resigned her position in the Criminal Division. For almost three years, John C. Keeney served as Acting Assistant Attorney General until President Bill Clinton nominated Mr. Robinson in April 1998. Mr. Robinson faced a skeptical Senate Judiciary Committee at his nomination hearing. The Committee expressed dissatisfaction with the uneven prosecution of narcotics offenses, leaks of grand jury material, and potential prosecution of elected officials for purportedly political reasons. The Washington Post reported that Mr. Robinson “deflected the thunder by promising to apply the law even-handedly.” He was confirmed a few months later. As Assistant Attorney General, Mr. Robinson increased the Division’s focus on transnational crime and stationed attorneys at U.S. Embassies throughout the world. He also helped expand the Division’s resources for drug trafficking and computer crime.
Mr. Robinson left the Division in 2001 and became a partner at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft in Washington, D.C. From 2001 to 2002, he was retained as a consultant by the United Nations Center for International Crime Prevention in Vienna to conduct a global study on the transfer of funds of illicit origin with respect to the negotiation of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption.
On August 6, 2010, Mr. Robinson died at the age of 66 of cancer. He left behind two children, five grandchildren, and his widow, Marietta “Marti” Robinson, who is now a commissioner with the Consumer Product Safety Commission. In a condolence letter to Mrs. Robinson, then-Attorney General Eric Holder wrote, “As Assistant Attorney General, Jim embodied the steady and steely resolve under pressure that we need and expect from our public servants. Every action that he took, and every decision that he made, reflected his singular desire to do justice and serve the people of this nation.”
Charlie Savage will attend his sixth NAFUSA conference in October- more than many NAFUSA members. He has truly become a “Friend of NAFUSA.” This year he will do double duty as our Saturday night keynote speaker and as the moderator of the Friday morning panel on national security v privacy. He is the Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington correspondent for the New York Times. Originally from Fort Wayne, Indiana, Savage graduated from Harvard College and earned a master’s degree from Yale Law School as part of a Knight Foundation journalism fellowship. He lives in Arlington, Virginia, with his wife, Luiza Ch. Savage, the editorial director of events for Politico, and their children, William and Peter Savage.
Savage has been covering post-9/11 issues — including national security, individual rights and the rule of law — since 2003, when he was a reporter for the Miami Herald. Later that year, he joined the Washington bureau of the Boston Globe; he then moved to the Washington bureau of the New York Times in 2008. He has also co-taught a seminar on national security and the Constitution at Georgetown University’s political science department.
Savage’s first book, Takeover, published in 2007, chronicles the Bush-Cheney administration’s efforts to expand presidential power. His second book, Power Wars, published in 2015, is an investigative history of national-security legal policy issues in the Obama administration.
His other journalism honors include the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award, the Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency, and the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism.
His keynote address is entitled: “Power Wars: Obama, Bush, and the Post-9/11 Presidency.”
Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch announced today the appointment of U.S. Attorney Richard S. Hartunian for the Northern District of New York as chair of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee of U.S. Attorneys (AGAC). Attorney General Lynch also appointed U.S. Attorney Barbara L. McQuade for the Eastern District of Michigan to serve as vice chair. Both appointments are effective immediately.
“The Attorney General’s Advisory Committee plays an essential role in shaping the Justice Department’s policies, implementing its programs, and ensuring that equal justice and the rule of law are upheld throughout the United States,” said Attorney General Lynch. “As a former chair of the AGAC, I know firsthand the significant duties required of the committee’s leaders, and I am certain that U.S. Attorneys Richard Hartunian and Barbara McQuade are ready to assume the responsibility of chairing such an important and distinguished body. They are both seasoned prosecutors, exemplary law enforcement officers, and devoted public servants, and I look forward to benefitting from their long experience and wise counsel as we advance the department’s vital work in the months ahead. I congratulate them on their new posts, and I once again thank former U.S. Attorney John Walsh for his outstanding service as AGAC chair over the last 20 months.”
U.S. Attorney Hartunian has been the vice chair of the AGAC since January 2015. He was appointed to the AGAC in 2013 and has served as the co-chair of the Border and Immigration Subcommittee, as well as a member of the subcommittees focused on Native American issues, Health Care Fraud and Environmental Crimes. He has served as U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of New York since January of 2010. Before that, he had been an Assistant U.S. Attorney there since 1997 and the district’s Narcotics Chief and Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force Coordinator since 2006.
U.S. Attorney Hartunian is a 1983 cum laude graduate of Georgetown University and a 1986 graduate of the Albany Law School of Union University. He was engaged in the private practice of law in Albany from 1987 to 1990. He served as an Assistant District Attorney in Albany County from 1990 to 1997, where his work on narcotics and violent crime cases led to his designation as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney in 1994.
In May of 2010, U.S. Attorney Hartunian was honored by the Armenian Bar Association as the first U.S. Attorney of Armenian descent.
Barbara McQuade
U.S. Attorney McQuade was appointed to the AGAC in April 2013 and has previously served as co-chair of the Terrorism and National Security Subcommittee. She also served on subcommittees addressing civil rights and border security. She became the first woman to serve as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan when she took office in January of 2010. She was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Detroit, Michigan, for 12 years, including service as Deputy Chief of the National Security Unit.
U.S. Attorney McQuade is a 1987 graduate of the University of Michigan and a 1991 graduate of the University of Michigan Law School. Before becoming a federal prosecutor, she practiced law in a Detroit firm and served as a law clerk to a U.S. District Judge. From 2003 to 2009, U.S. Attorney McQuade was as an adjunct law professor at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law.
While U.S. Attorney McQuade replaces U.S. Attorney Hartunian as vice chair, U.S. Attorney Hartunian replaces former U.S. Attorney John Walsh for the District of Colorado as chair.
The AGAC was created in 1973 to serve as the voice of the U.S. Attorneys and to advise the Attorney General on policy, management and operational issues impacting the offices of the U.S. Attorneys.
You must be logged in to post a comment.