Craig S. Morford (born 1959) is an American attorney and former acting United States Deputy Attorney General. He is best known for his successful prosecution of James A. Traficant and The Morford Report, written after the overturning of the 2003 Detroit Sleeper Cell convictions.
Personal life
Craig Morford grew up in Schenectady, New York in a middle-class family. His father, William, marketed Pillsbury products to grocery stores in upstate New York and New England. His mother, Betty, was a homemaker who also sold women's clothing during in-home shows. His older brother, William is an antiques dealer. As a child, Morford was intrigued by "Perry Mason" and "Judd for the Defense" and dreamed of becoming a lawyer. [1] He and his wife, Mary Jo, have four children, ages 13 to 22 and live in Rocky River, Ohio.[1]
Education
In 1981, he graduated with an Economics degree from Hope College, a small liberal arts school in Holland, Michigan and spent his junior year in Washington. He had internships with Sen. Harrison Schmitt of New Mexico and Kimberly-Clark Corp.. In 1984, he graduated from Valparaiso University School of Law in Indiana, 20th in his class of 87.[1]
Career
Morford has worked for the Justice Department for twenty years and has spent most of his career pursuing public-corruption and organized-crime cases in Cleveland, Ohio.
His first job was with the Internal Revenue Service's district counsel office in Cleveland. In 1983, a senior attorney decided the IRS should pursue a tax case against James A. Traficant, elected to Congress in 1984, should have paid taxes on the $163,000 he took from the mob. 1987, Morford and Richard Bloom argued the case. Traficant, who had represented himself on a 1983 bribery charge, and won, chose to represented himself again however this time the verdict was "lost".[1]
1987, Morford was hired by the Strike Force[disambiguation needed] to help prosecute pornography czar, Reuben Sturman, who was convicted of hiding and laundering his profits. He also teamed with James Wooley and prosecuted three Hells Angels accused of killing a man they mistakenly thought was a rival gang member.
Morford won convictions against mob boss, "Lennie" Lenine Strollo and his minions; several police officers, including Mahoning County Sheriff Philip Chance; three judges; eight lawyers; and the county prosecutor.[1] From 1996-2002, Morford won 70 convictions of corrupt politicians and mob figures in Youngstown and the Mahoning Valley.
Morford lead a task force that prosecuted Lucas County Republican Chairman Tom Noe and officials at the Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation.[2]
He briefly worked as acting U.S. attorney in Detroit and Nashville.
In 2002, he was the lead prosecutor in a second case of then-Congressman James A. Traficant, who was convicted of bribery and racketeering.[3] Reportedly, he lost twelve pounds during the trial. Morford was Acting United States Deputy Attorney General in 2007 and 2008, until the confirmation of Mark Filip. Senate investigation/confirmation would have been required for permanent appointment of Morford as the official Deputy Attorney General.
He was formerly the Acting United States Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee and the Eastern District of Michigan.
Since May, 2008, Morford is the Chief Compliance Officer at Cardinal Health, a health care technology developer in Dublin, Ohio. He is responsible for company compliance with internal policies and outside regulations that govern the company's products, services and operations.[2]
U.S. v. James A. Traficant
In 2002, Traficant was indicted[4] on federal corruption charges for taking campaign funds for personal use. He represented himself, insisting that the trial was part of a vendetta against him dating to his 1983 acquittal on federal bribery charges. On April 15, 2002, after nine weeks of testimony and nearly four days of deliberating, he was convicted of 10 felony counts, four counts of bribery, one count of accepting illegal gratuities, one count of obstruction of justice, one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States, two counts of filing a false tax return and one count of racketeering including bribery, racketeering, and tax evasion.[5] On July 29, 2002, he was sentenced to eight years of prison and fined him $150,000 (in addition to $96,000 a jury had ordered him to return),[6]
On July 16, 2002, the House Committee Standards of Official Conduct convened a misconduct hearing and heard testimony from Richard Detore, who testified on Traficant's behalf (broadcast on C-SPAN).[7]
Detore testified that the prosecutor, Craig Morford, was allegedly witness tampering, committing prosecutorial misconduct related to the alleged Youngstown, Ohio's Cafaro Company's involvement in tax fraud and mafia money-laundering. During Detore's second interview, Morford threatened that the IRS would audit him if he did not testify according to a "script", and that he would prove Detore committed bank fraud, which was false. Morford continuously attempted to harass, agitate and intimidate, "yelling, screaming, and throwing papers at" Defore for being "uncooperative", and warning him he "was getting on the wrong train". Detore refused to lie for anyone for any reason, and refused to testify. Detore's home was invaded and ransacked. Morford had granted him direct and indirect immunity, but denied it, after Detore refused to testify. "It was a process by ambush...an out-of-body experience."
Even with exculpatory evidence, Morford indicted Detore with one count of conspiracy to violate the Federal Bribery Statute by serving as liaison between his former employer, U.S. Aerospace Group, and Traficant, but was acquitted[8] by a jury. See C-SPAN videos: here[9][10][11]
Ohio Congressman Ted Strickland was so disturbed by these sworn televised allegations of DOJ misconduct that he publicly called for an investigation.[12] The DOJ 'internal affairs'[13] ignored Strickland, never investigating either the sworn military earwitness affidavit[14] or the attorney billing records [15] that corroborated the dates/times of harassing witness tampering phone calls testified to on C-SPAN and in the affidavit.
The Morford Report
After a nine-month internal review of the Detroit Sleeper Cell case, [16] the Department of Justice findings showed that prosecutors railroaded the defendants to prison, concealing dozens of pieces of exculpatory evidence that should have been given to defense attorneys during the trial. Subsequently, On September 2, 2004, US District Judge Gerald Rosen, threw out the June 2003 convictions of three Detroit-area men.
The judge ruled that the prosecution’s “understandable sense of mission and zeal to obtain a conviction” in the wake of September 11 “overcame not only its professional judgment, but its broader obligations to the justice system and the rule of law.”
The internal investigation, a 60-page memorandum, The Morford Report submitted by Craig Morford on August 31, 2004,[17] found that the prosecution withheld from the defense numerous e-mails, photographs, witness statements and other items, and that the errors and misconduct in the case were so widespread that there was “no reasonable prospect of winning” on appeal.
“In its best light, the record would show that the prosecution committed a pattern of mistakes and oversights that deprived defendants of discoverable evidence...and created a record filled with misleading inferences that such material did not exist...Unfortunately, numerous developments since trial, including the discovery of significant materials not disclosed by the prosecution, have undermined each part of this three-legged stool.”
Richard Convertino, the lead prosecutor, was the subject of the Report. He was removed from the case. Convertino allegedly failed to turn over photographic evidence to the defense and obtained evidence from witnesses, leading the judge and other attorneys to believe the photographs did not exist. The Report indicated that much of the key evidence and testimony in the prosecution’s case was either fabricated or deliberately misrepresented. A videotape was found at the men’s apartment. A Tunisian man in the video told investigators that the tape was shot while he was a university student on trips to Disneyland, Las Vegas, New York, and other tourist locales. Prosecutors demonstrated to the jury that the tape was surveillance footage for a potential terrorist attack, but failed to reveal that FBI agents had disagreed with this supposition, and that “under the court’s established protocol, the government should have brought this information to the court’s attention.” An Air Force colonel testified that military officials agreed that a sketch was of an aircraft hangar at the base in Turkey. The Report concluded that American investigators in Germany determined the sketch was an outline of the Middle East. A CIA official had shown it to various experts who invalidated its significance. The prosecution denied to the Defense they had photos of a Jordan prison hospital. The Report claimed, “It is difficult, if not impossible, to compare the...sketch with the photos and see a correlation." The Report report criticized the testimony of the Youssef Hmimmsa, the prosecution’s star witness. Hmimmsa testifiied that the defendants asked him to join a terrorist cell that was planning to shoot down airplanes with Stinger missiles and were involved in other terrorist activities.In exchange for his testimony, Hmimmsa enter guilty pleas to 10 felony counts, and was sentenced to 37 to 46 months in prison rather than up to 81 years. The Report claims Richard Convertino “made a deliberate decision not to have the FBI take any notes” during Hmimmsa’s debriefings sessions, to avoid any challenge to his trial testimony.[18][19]
Convertino acquittal
Subsequently, in the case entitled, US v. John Doe,[20] Convertino was charged with conspiracy to conceal possibly exculpatory evidence from the defense and lying to a Federal judge. Harry Smith III, formerly a U.S. Department of State investigator, who had testified in the terrorism case prosecuted by Richard Convertino, was allegedly part of the conspiracy. Not turning the evidence over to the defense had led, at the government's request, to the court dismissal of the terrorism case prior to the charging of the case's prosecutor for the conspiracy. Convertino faced a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine. On October 31, 2007, a jury acquitted the prosecutor and the investigator. Convertino told reporters in the federal district courthouse here that the charges of obstruction of justice were “a politically motivated prosecution that never should have been brought.”[21] [22]
Convertino had previously filed a lawsuit [23] against the Justice Department, former Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and other superiors, accusing them of mismanaging anti-terrorism efforts and retaliating against him for testifying to Congress about those efforts.[24]
Convertino explained his travails on the Public Radio International program This American Life. [25]
References
- ^ a b c d e http://blog.cleveland.com/pdextra/2007/07/lead_attorney_found_strength_i.html
- ^ a b http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2008/03/craig_morford_exfederal_prosec.html
- ^ Eggen, Dan (July 19, 2007). "Morford Named To No. 2 Spot At Justice Dept". Washington Post. pp. A3..
- ^ http://fl1.findlaw.com/news.findlaw.com/cnn/docs/traficant/traficant50401indt.pdf
- ^ http://www.weathernet5.com/sh/news/ohio/stories/news-ohio-139397020020411-150436.html
- ^ http://everything2.com/title/James%2520A.%2520Traficant%252C%2520Jr.
- ^ http://www.eToys-Bankruptcy-Fraud.info/cspan.wmv C-SPAN Video (16Jul2002)
- ^ http://www.convertino.blogspot.com/
- ^ http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/includes/templates/library/flash_popup.php?pID=171263-2&clipStart=&clipStop=
- ^ http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/includes/templates/library/flash_popup.php?pID=171263-3&clipStart=&clipStop=
- ^ http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/includes/templates/library/flash_popup.php?pID=171263-4&clipStart=&clipStop=
- ^ http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,58248,00.html Fox News (23Jul2002)
- ^ http://www.usdoj.gov/opr/ Called the "Office of Professional Responsibility"
- ^ http://www.eToys-Bankruptcy-Fraud.info/navycapt.pdf Affidavit (25Jun2002)
- ^ http://arentfox.com/people/index.cfm?fa=profile&id=193 John Nassikas Esq. of Arent Fox
- ^ http://fl1.findlaw.com/news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/terrorism/uskoubriti82802ind.pdf
- ^ http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/terrorism040831.htm
- ^ http://web.archive.org/web/20101204152108/http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/sep2004/detr-s03.shtml
- ^ Slevin, Peter (November 20, 2005). "Detroit 'Sleeper Cell' Prosecutor Faces Probe". The Washington Post. Retrieved April 30, 2010.
- ^ http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2006/March/06_crm_183.html
- ^ http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071031/NEWS19/71031020
- ^ Shenon, Philip (November 1, 2007). "Ex-Prosecutor Acquitted of Misconduct in 9/11 Case". The New York Times. Retrieved April 30, 2010.
- ^ http://files.findlaw.com/news.findlaw.com/cnn/docs/doj/convertino21304cmp.pdf
- ^ Slevin, Peter (November 20, 2005). "Detroit 'Sleeper Cell' Prosecutor Faces Probe". The Washington Post. Retrieved April 30, 2010.
- ^ http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=356
External links
- US v. James Trafficant, May 4, 2001.
- CSPAN video of Trafficant Congressional Hearing, Part 1 July 16, 2002.
- CSPAN video of Trafficant Congressional Hearing, Part 2 July 16, 2002.
- CSPAN video of Trafficant Congressional Hearing, Part 3 July 16, 2002.
- US v. KARIM KOUBRITI, et al., August 28, 2002.
- Richard Convertino v. USA, February 13, 2004.
- "The Prosecutor", May 30, 2008