Convicted Murderer Gets New Trial Because of Lawyer’s Stalking Indictment
A New Jersey lawyer who had been indicted for criminal stalking had an obligation to disclose the charge to a client accused of murder, according to the New Jersey Supreme Court.
The opinion issued yesterday (PDF) said the client, Mylee Cottle, was entitled to a new murder trial because of the “intolerable conflict of interest” by lawyer Steven Olitsky. The youth had been sentenced to life in prison after Olitsky represented him at trial.
Olitsky was participating in a pretrial intervention program that would result in dismissal of the stalking charge if he successfully completed treatment and other conditions. The program required him to submit acknowledgements by his clients that they were aware of his participation, but Olitsky didn’t do so in the juvenile’s case.
The court found Olitsky had a per se conflict of interest and said prejudice is presumed, the Legal Profession Blog reports in its summary of the opinion.
The opinion said Olitsky was depending on the prosecutor’s office to release him from prosecution in his own case, a scenario fraught with the potential of impairing zealous advocacy in his client’s case. “A defense attorney at the mercy of the very prosecutor’s office trying his client for murder has a conflict of interest,” the court said. “An attorney must never be perceived as having a reason to curry favor with the prosecutor’s office at the expense of his client.”
