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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.<ref name="blog.cleveland.com"/>
== U.S. v. James A. Traficant ==
<!-- Deleted image removed: [[File:Traficantmug.jpg|thumb|left|150px|Summit County Ohio Jail Mugshot of James Traficant, Aug. 1, 2002]] -->
In 2002, Traficant was indicted<ref>http://fl1.findlaw.com/news.findlaw.com/cnn/docs/traficant/traficant50401indt.pdf</ref> 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 (United States)|tax return]] and one count of [[racketeering]] including bribery, racketeering, and [[tax evasion]].<ref>http://www.weathernet5.com/sh/news/ohio/stories/news-ohio-139397020020411-150436.html</ref> 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),<ref>http://everything2.com/title/James%2520A.%2520Traficant%252C%2520Jr.</ref>
On July 16, 2002, [[U.S. House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct|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).<ref>http://www.eToys-Bankruptcy-Fraud.info/cspan.wmv C-SPAN Video (16Jul2002)</ref>
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 [[Internal Revenue Service|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 from prosecution|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<ref>http://www.convertino.blogspot.com/</ref> by a jury. See ''[[C-SPAN]] videos: here''<ref>http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/includes/templates/library/flash_popup.php?pID=171263-2&clipStart=&clipStop=</ref><ref>http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/includes/templates/library/flash_popup.php?pID=171263-3&clipStart=&clipStop=</ref><ref>http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/includes/templates/library/flash_popup.php?pID=171263-4&clipStart=&clipStop=</ref>
Ohio Congressman [[Ted Strickland]] was so disturbed by these sworn televised allegations of DOJ misconduct that he publicly called for an investigation.<ref>http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,58248,00.html Fox News (23Jul2002)</ref> The DOJ 'internal affairs'<ref>http://www.usdoj.gov/opr/ Called the "Office of Professional Responsibility"</ref> ignored Strickland, never investigating either the sworn military earwitness affidavit<ref>http://www.eToys-Bankruptcy-Fraud.info/navycapt.pdf Affidavit (25Jun2002)</ref> or the attorney billing records <ref>http://arentfox.com/people/index.cfm?fa=profile&id=193 John Nassikas Esq. of Arent Fox</ref> 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,
<ref>http://fl1.findlaw.com/news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/terrorism/uskoubriti82802ind.pdf</ref> the [[United States Department of Justice|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,<ref>http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/terrorism040831.htm</ref> 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.
<blockquote>
“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.”
</blockquote>
[[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, Nevada|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 [[FIM-92 Stinger|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.<ref>http://web.archive.org/web/20101204152108/http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/sep2004/detr-s03.shtml</ref><ref>{{cite news| url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/19/AR2005111900952_3.html | work=The Washington Post | title=Detroit 'Sleeper Cell' Prosecutor Faces Probe | first=Peter | last=Slevin | date=November 20, 2005 | accessdate=April 30, 2010}}</ref>
===Convertino acquittal===
Subsequently, in the case entitled, '''''US v. John Doe''''',<ref>http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2006/March/06_crm_183.html</ref> Convertino was charged with [[conspiracy (crime)|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.”<ref>http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071031/NEWS19/71031020</ref>
<ref>{{cite news| url=http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/us/01detroit.html | work=The New York Times | title=Ex-Prosecutor Acquitted of Misconduct in 9/11 Case | first=Philip | last=Shenon | date=November 1, 2007 | accessdate=April 30, 2010}}</ref>
Convertino had previously filed a lawsuit
<ref>http://files.findlaw.com/news.findlaw.com/cnn/docs/doj/convertino21304cmp.pdf</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite news| url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/19/AR2005111900952.html | work=The Washington Post | title=Detroit 'Sleeper Cell' Prosecutor Faces Probe | first=Peter | last=Slevin | date=November 20, 2005 | accessdate=April 30, 2010}}</ref>
Convertino explained his travails on the [[Public Radio International]] program [[This American Life]].
<ref>http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=356</ref>
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