Legal News

Prosecutors Hanging On ? Just Barely ? in Grace Asbestos Case

By Ashby Jones

Forgive us for the repetitive leads this morning, but it seems that that darn history just keeps repeating itself. So herewith, we bring you echoes of what we’ve already written this morning:

Another day, another set of allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.

That’s right — fresh off the Ted Stevens debacle, the DOJ is staring down another possible embarrassing situation in another high-profile case, this one involving its criminal prosecution of W.R. Grace, the big chemical products company, and five of its executives. The government has charged the group with a handful of crimes in connection with their operation of a vermiculite mine in Libby, Mont. (pictured), which is alleged to have poisoned many of the town’s residents. Click here, here and here for earlier LB posts on the case; here for today’s NYT report; here for the report from the “Grace Case” blog.

The quick background: lawyers for Grace asked last week for the charges to be thrown. They accused prosecutors of repeatedly violating court orders to turn over evidence favorable to the defense and of putting on the stand a star witness whose credibility, they said, has since been destroyed by information that the jury never heard about.

"There's a failure in the process here," Judge Molloy said, addressing one of the prosecutors. "The question is, What do I do about it? I don't know what the remedy is here; you tell me."

According to the NYT, for the most part, prosecutors did not fight back, but said repeatedly that they thought most of the missteps had been small, and that they were sorry for the rest.

But Judge Malloy seemed to see things differently. He ultimately dismissed all charges against one of the five defendants, Robert Walsh, but said he had not yet figured out how to deal with the others.

At one point, Judge Molloy told one of the prosecutors that he has "no faith in anything the Government says."

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