Feds raid criminal defense lawyer's office, seek conflict hearings in multiple cases
A rising star among Chicago’s criminal defense bar is the target of a federal criminal probe concerning possible subornation of perjury in a 2009 drug case.
Attorney Beau Brindley’s downtown law office was raided by the FBI last month, and the feds are now seeking conflict hearings for multiple clients, according to the Chicago Sun-Times and NBC Chicago.
At a Wednesday hearing, U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman appointed a new lawyer for Rahshone Burnett, the newspaper reports. Burnett, a convicted drug dealer, could potentially be asked to testify against the 36-year-old Brindle, because the perjury allegation concerns Burnett.
NBC Chicago says the government has asked that all Brindley clients be informed of the probe, so they can decide whether to waive a potential conflict.
Brindley and his lawyer, Cynthia Giacchetti, declined to comment, the Sun-Times says.
In an opinion (PDF) earlier this year in an unrelated case, the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals publicly rebuked Brindley. A three-judge panel characterized as “deceit” the attorney’s failure to discuss and include in the appellate record a transcript of a trial court hearing about a photo array used to identify his client, a now-convicted bank robber. The appeals court also fined Brindley $2,000.
Brindley has represented a number of defendants in well-known cases. They include, as the Sun-Times notes, another bank robber who made headlines when he and his cellmate escaped from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago in 2012 by climbing down 17 stories on a rope made of bedsheets and dental floss.
