Ex-Prosecutor ‘Crossed Over the Line,’ Jury Is Told

by PHILIP SHENON - October 31, 2007

A federal prosecutor withheld crucial evidence from the defense in the first major terrorism case announced after the Sept. 11 terror attacks because he was consumed with winning a high-profile courtroom victory, Justice Department lawyers told a jury in closing arguments Tuesday at the trial here of their former colleague.

The former Michigan prosecutor, Richard G. Convertino, and a former State Department security officer, are now awaiting a jury’s verdict on charges that they conspired to hide photographs that, if shared at the 2003 trial, might have undermined the case against four North African immigrants accused of being part of a terror sleeper cell.

Two of the North African men were convicted on terrorism charges, but the convictions were overturned in 2004 amid accusations of concealed evidence and prosecutorial misconduct.

In defense closing arguments, lawyers for Mr. Convertino and the security officer, Harry R. Smith III, who are being tried together, insisted that both men had been respected government employees whose mistakes, if any, had been unintentional and reflected the extraordinary workload they faced, especially after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Mr. Convertino’s trial this month, in Federal District Court here on charges of obstruction of justice and conspiracy, has been a major embarrassment to the Justice Department, if only because the department has been forced to reveal in detail how one of its most prominent terrorism cases after Sept. 11 was bungled.

Mr. Convertino and Mr. Smith have been accused of hiding photographs of a military hospital in Jordan that was the supposed target of the terrorist plot.

After learning of the existence of the photographs after the 2003 trial, lawyers for the four defendants said they would have undermined the credibility of government witnesses and other evidence used against their clients.

The lawyers said the photographs did not match a sketch found in a dilapidated Detroit apartment where three of the defendants lived. Mr. Convertino had argued that the Jordanian hospital, the Queen Alia military hospital, was depicted in the sketch, which was found in a notebook that contained the Arabic lettering for “Queen Alia” and “Kingdom of Jordan.”

Eileen Gleason, a trial lawyer with the Public Integrity section of the Justice Department, told jurors Tuesday that Mr. Convertino and Mr. Smith “crossed over the line from upholding the law to violating it.”

“This trial is not about terrorism,” Ms. Gleason said. “This is a case about truth and lies.”

She said that Mr. Convertino, like all Justice Department prosecutors, was required under federal rules to provide the defense with evidence that might demonstrate a defendant’s innocence, such as the hospital photographs.

Mr. Convertino was so determined to win a conviction, she said, that “it was too much for him to play by the rules.”

Mr. Convertino and Mr. Smith, who had assisted the Justice Department in gathering evidence for the 2003 trial when he was assigned to the United States Embassy in Amman, Jordan, have pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and false statements.

The lawyer for Mr. Convertino, William Sullivan, appeared to struggle to hold back tears as he described how his client had taken a phone call at home six days after Sept. 11, alerting him that there might be a terrorist sleeper cell in his own community, and how aggressively he had worked to pursue what he thought was a legitimate terrorist threat posed by the North African men.

“He worked to preserve your safety,” Mr. Sullivan told the jurors. “Mr. Convertino was acting to save lives. Some of those lives may have been your own.”

He said that Mr. Convertino had been overwhelmed by paperwork in the case and denied assistance from elsewhere in the Justice Department, which might explain any oversight in alerting the defense to the photographs. He said the photos were only a small part of the evidence gathered by prosecutors.

Ms. Gleason, the prosecutor, told the jurors to “pay no attention to the flag-waving” by the defense lawyers in their closing arguments on Friday. “This case is not a test of your patriotism,” she said. “You can’t break the law to catch lawbreakers.”