Boston Chief Judge Raps DOJ in Mukasey Letter
Boston’s chief federal judge has written a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey criticizing the U.S. Justice Department for lax discipline of a federal prosecutor who withheld evidence and a failure to be candid with the court.
Chief Judge Mark Wolf asked disciplinary authorities to investigate assistant U.S. attorney Jeffrey Auerhahn last summer after the prosecutor failed to disclose a detective’s handwritten memo detailing a man’s murder confession in a Mafia case. The confession contradicted the case against a defendant who was sent to prison for ordering a hit, and Wolf ordered him released. Auerhahn received a secret reprimand.
“The [Justice] Department’s performance in the Auerhahn matter raises serious questions about whether judges should continue to rely upon the department to investigate and sanction misconduct by federal prosecutors,” Wolf wrote, according to an account in the Boston Globe.
He also said the department’s civil litigators had taken positions inconsistent with its criminal lawyers in cases stemming from the mishandling of a fugitive mobster, the Globe says. “The department’s failure to be candid and consistent with the court has become disturbingly common in the District of Massachusetts,” Wolf wrote.
A hat tip to Blogonaut, which posted the story.
