‘Embarrassment to the government’: Judge slams prosecutors for unraveling of ‘Fat Leonard’ Navy bribery case
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A San Diego federal judge on Tuesday blasted the U.S. Attorney’s Office for its “significant misconduct” in the prosecution of the U.S. Navy’s “Fat Leonard” bribery and corruption scandal, saying the continued crumbling of the case is an “embarrassment to the government.”
U.S. District Judge Janis Sammartino said during a hearing in her San Diego courtroom that prosecutorial “misconduct started (the) unraveling of this case.” She called it an “extremely unfortunate” situation that was “all the government’s making.”
Sammartino made the comments during a hearing in which she agreed — reluctantly — to throw out a previous guilty plea by former Navy Cmdr. Stephen Shedd and dismissed all charges against him. She also dismissed felony pleas by three other former Navy officers and a retired Marine colonel and allowed the four men to each plead guilty to a single misdemeanor.
In a similar move last year as the result of the same government misconduct, the judge tossed out the jury convictions of four Navy officers who had been found guilty at trial and allowed them to plead guilty to misdemeanor counts.
Sammartino made it clear Tuesday that there was no new information to suggest the five defendants in her courtroom did not accept the bribes or commit the acts to which they previously pleaded guilty. But she said that the misconduct and its snowball effect made it so that dismissing Shedd’s charges and allowing the four misdemeanor plea deals was the best remaining option.
“While not a perfect resolution, it is accepted to minimize disparities in this case,” the judge said. If their previous felony pleas had been left to stand, the officers who pleaded guilty would have faced harsher penalties than those who went to trial.
Sammartino also said the government’s continued lack of communication to the public and the military community about what has gone wrong with the prosecution was “troublesome.”
U.S. Attorney Tara McGrath, who was present in the courtroom, declined to comment afterward.
Tuesday’s hearing provided the latest twist in what has become a spectacular unraveling of the legal case against the dozens of Navy officers who took bribes from Leonard Glenn Francis, aka “Fat Leonard,” the Malaysian contractor at the center of the corruption scheme.
.....Francis pleaded guilty early on, admitting that he defrauded the Navy out of at least $35 million, and subsequently cooperated with the prosecution for years.
But as the decade-old case dragged on, it began to show cracks. Defense attorneys raised questions about evidence that they believed prosecutors tried to hide — questions that led Sammartino to declare Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Pletcher, the former lead prosecutor in the case, had committed “flagrant misconduct.” The defense attorneys also questioned the reliability of other documents in the case and the prosecution’s failure to disclose that a key investigator had made false statements in a similar investigation. Defense attorneys also raised red flags about the preferential treatment that Francis received while on house arrest before he absconded and fled the country in late 2022. He has since been returned to the U.S. as part of a prisoner swap.
Sammartino cited those issues in a numbered list Tuesday in explaining her decision to dismiss the felony guilty pleas by Shedd and the four others: former Navy Cmdr. Jose Luis Sanchez; retired Chief Warrant Officer Robert Gorsuch; former Navy Capt. Donald Hornbeck; and retired Marine Col. Enrico “Rick” DeGuzman.
.....Sammartino said Tuesday that the filing was “just barely” sufficient and provided the “bare minimum” information necessary for her to accept the proposed resolutions.
In that filing, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Ko acknowledged that the issues with the case could affect even more defendants than the nine who have already had their guilty pleas or trial convictions dismissed. Ko wrote that that the government was “committed to ensuring all the defendants receive any redress that is owed them for the (prosecution) issues” and said prosecutors were reviewing other cases to determine if other defendants were deserving of relief because of the prosecutorial issues.
What that potential relief could look like is still unclear, but several attorneys whose clients had previously been sentenced in the case were on hand Tuesday to observe the proceedings.
Shedd admitted to sending Francis classified information about planned ship movements and providing him with proprietary invoices from GDMA’s competitors so Francis could undermine their bids.
Prosecutors said Shedd warranted a full dismissal because he testified at trial. “We do not think it is fair or just for this defendant who acknowledged his guilt and testified publicly against peers of similar or greater culpability to be penalized more harshly or the same,” Ko wrote in a filing last year. “Considering how the (trial) cases ended, through no fault of Shedd’s, dismissal is the only realistic way to differentiate his effort to mitigate his wrongs.”
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