Legal News

Frank Pignatelli: Lawyer Turned Undercover Narc

By Nathan Koppel

Attorney Frank Pignatelli is not winning many friends these days among the criminal defense bar.

Pignatelli supposedly worked undercover to help federal authorities arrest some of Pignatelli’s former criminal clients, who had been charged with drug offenses.

Here’s a story Sunday from the Akron Beacon Journal. Federal authorities arrested 30 people in Akron and Cleveland and seized hundreds of pounds of marijuana and cocaine, thanks to the help of Pignatelli, who started working undercover with authorities when he faced his own indictment as an alleged co-conspirator in a drug offense.

Pignatelli, 45, who has not been charged with any crimes, declined to comment for the article. His attorney said he “acted responsibly and as required under the law.” Pignatelli now works as an attorney in Denver, doing none other than criminal defense work for alleged drug dealers. No one, at least, can say that he does not know the terrain.

Some lawyer-bloggers are, um, a bit exercised.

“There is no place horrific enough in the bowels of hell for the soul of a lawyer who would flip on his clients to save his sorry … butt,” writes New Yorker Scott Greenfield, who pens the Simple Justice blog.

Houstonian Mark Bennett, of the Defending People blog, asks: “What kind of shmuck would hire Frank Pignatelli?”

But, Bennett says, Pignatelli did not necessarily violate his ethical duties. “It is possible that some of his clients were using him to commit crimes,” he writes. “In that case, what they told him was not privileged, and it’s hard to sympathize with either him or them.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on January 28, 2009 (boomark / email).