5th Circuit OKs conviction that led to 20-year prison term for lawyer who bribed judge
A former South Texas judge got six years for admittedly taking bribes from lawyers, after cooperating with the feds in prosecuting the attorneys and others.
But a conviction that resulted in a 20-year-term for former personal injury lawyer Marc Garrett Rosenthal in the Cameron County racketeering conspiracy case was upheld by a federal appeals court on Wednesday, the Austin American-Statesman reports.
Rosenthal did not challenge the sufficiency of the evidence against him, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals noted in its opinion (PDF). And the appellate panel rejected the procedural arguments on which the defense based its request for a new trial.
Rosenthal, the panel wrote, not only bribed then-judge Abel Limas for favorable treatment for his cases but paid witnesses for favorable testimony and “worked with an employee in the clerk’s office to circumvent the regular assignment process and have the matters assigned to Limas,” among other misconduct.
In one case over a train accident, an employee of Rosenthal’s firm testified that Rosenthal had him arrange to pay a sheriff’s deputy $4,000 to say, falsely, that a train worker had invited the injured woman to board illegally. The worker had also been heard to say, the deputy falsely stated, that the train company “[did] not care if its trains run over wetbacks”
A threat by Rosenthal to publish these false statements on billboards helped win a $575,000 settlement from the train company in 2007, the opinion notes.
Even if, as Rosenthal argued, the wiretaps that helped convict him should not have been admitted, they were harmless error, the 5th Circuit said. That’s because the jury could have heard the same information from Limas and former state representative Jose Santiago “Jim” Solis, a Democrat, who both testified against him.
Solis, who served as counsel to Rosenthal’s firm and was initially claimed by Rosenthal’s defense counsel to be a rogue employee, got a sentence of not quite four years for extortion.
Related coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “Trial begins for final lawyer charged in judicial bribery scheme; convicted ex-judge is star witness”
ABAJournal.com: “Ethics probe ordered after lawyer’s acquittal in court corruption case”
See also:
ABAJournal.com: “As trial looms for ex-DA accused in RICO enterprise case, feds make new accusations”
ABAJournal.com: “Trial begins for ex-DA accused in cash-for-court-favors case; convicted ex-judge is first witness”
ABAJournal.com: “Former district attorney gets 13 years in federal corruption case over his work as a prosecutor”
