Los Angeles politician Mark Ridley-Thomas seeks new trial in USC bribery conspiracy
Defense lawyers filed a motion for new trial Monday as well as a motion for acquittal.
Los Angeles politician Mark Ridley-Thomas’ criminal defense lawyers say he deserves a new trial because of false testimony by an FBI agent and prosecutorial misconduct that wrongly interjected opinion into argument while vouching for the case’s credibility.
Filed Monday, the 33-page motion comes one month after a jury convicted the now-former Los Angeles city councilman of seven federal felonies for a bribery conspiracy that involved monetizing his support for a county contract with the University of Southern California School of Social Work involving the TeleHealth virtual counseling program. Jurors concluded Ridley-Thomas acted corruptly by using the contract as leverage to get then-Dean Marilyn Flynn to indirectly send $100,000 from his campaign coffers to United Ways of California to benefit his son’s new policy initiative.
The motion for new trial, filed by Ridley-Thomas’ lawyers at Morrison & Foerster LLP, says the jury’s decision to convict likely was driven by false testimony about the TeleHealth contract amendment, which Ridley-Thomas supported while chairman of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in 2017.
The testimony was from FBI Special Agent Brian Adkins, who affirmed in direct-examination that he believes John Sherin, the now-former head of the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, gave disingenuous justifications for extending the TeleHealth contract, and that his belief is “based on my interview with Dr. Sherin.”
“This is false. Nowhere in Dr. Sherin’s 302—or in the video of his surreptitiously recorded FBI interview—does he state or imply that his recitation of the justifications for the extension was not genuine,” according to the motion.
Adkins also testified that Ridley-Thomas’ threats to cancel or rescind contracts “was brought up during interviews that we conducted,” but Ridley-Thomas’ lawyers say that inflates what Adkins actually was told.
Adkins’ testimony “was the only evidence Dr. Sherin was anything other than fully supportive of the 2018 Telehealth amendment.”
“Agent Adkins’s false statements therefore created the only pathway for the jury to infer that support for the Telehealth amendment was not genuine, which bears directly on Dr. Ridley-Thomas’s intent,” according to the motion.
A jury on March 30 convicted Ridley-Thomas of single counts of bribery and conspiracy, as well as four counts of honest services wire fraud and a single count of honest services mail fraud.
The jury forewoman told reporters the convictions relate to Ridley-Thomas’ donation of $100,000 in campaign money to USC in conjunction with Dean Flynn’s donation of $100,000 from USC to United Way for Ridley-Thomas’ son Sebastian’s new policy initiative. The money movements were linked to Ridley-Thomas’ support for the TeleHealth contract amendment that lucratively looped in Flynn’s school.
But jurors couldn’t agree that Sebastian’s USC admission, scholarship and professorship were part of a conspiracy involving Los Angeles County contracts, so they returned not guilty verdicts for one count of honest services mail fraud and 11 counts of honest services wire fraud.
A political stalwart in Los Angeles for 30 years, Ridley-Thomas is out of custody awaiting sentencing, currently scheduled for Aug. 21. He was removed from his position on the Los Angeles City Council after his convictions.
Brought under Rule 33 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, motions for new trial are often filed but rarely granted. Judges must determine not only that the new evidence presented is valid or the alleged errors identified in trial are real, but that they likely affected the jury’s verdict.
In Ridley-Thomas’ case, prosecutors have until May 22 to file their response. A hearing is scheduled June 26 at 8:30 a.m. before U.S. District Judge Dale Fischer, which is the same day and time she’s scheduled to sentence 84-year-old Flynn for her bribery plea. Fischer also is to consider a separate motion for acquittal Ridley-Thomas’ lawyers filed Monday that says prosecutors didn’t present the evidence needed to support Ridley-Thomas’ convictions.
“The government rested its case on evidence of the ‘secret funneling’ of the $100,000 donation, but that argument was predicated on a supposed conflict of interest in failing to disclose the existence of that donation, and Skilling v. United States prohibits honest services fraud convictions based on such a conflict of interest,” according to the acquittal motion, referring to the federal appellate decision in the historic securities fraud prosecution of Enron Corp. CEO Jeff Skilling. “The government also presented no evidence that Dr. Ridley-Thomas (or his son) received any financial benefits, that any benefits were linked to an official act, or that he acted corruptly with the intent to be influenced regarding county items. Speculation and conjecture do not satisfy the government’s burden.”
Fischer presided over 68-year-old Ridley-Thomas trial in March, and she’s already addressed some of the issues raised in the motion for new trial, at least in part. That includes allegations of improper vouching during Assistant U.S. Attorney Lindsey Greer Dotson’s closing argument: Ridley-Thomas’ lawyer Daralyn Durie objected at the time, but Dotson said she wasn’t vouching and Judge Fischer agreed.
But the motion for new trial says the vouching extended beyond Dotson’s closing and included statements by Adkins during his testimony, including when he said Ridley-Thomas’ relationship with Flynn “appeared to turn corrupt” in the summer of 2017.
Adkins’ testimony “went beyond describing mere investigatory steps,” the motion says, and improperly induced jurors to trust the government’s judgment “in the form of Agent Adkins’ impermissible opinion.”
“He impermissibly opined both on the law and on Dr. Ridley-Thomas’s guilt, and he did so at the prompting of the government,” according to the motion.
Fischer did issue one curative instruction related to Adkins’ testimony about his review of the investigative documents, drawing the jury’s attention to his conflicting statements about whether he’d reviewed all documents or a colleague had assisted.
But the judge never ruled on a defense mistrial motion, and she declined to issue a curative instruction over the other testimony the defense said was improper.
“The defense respectfully contends that these decisions were errors and that the failure to provide a curative instruction and the failure to strike Agent Adkins’s improper testimony unfairly prejudiced Dr. Ridley-Thomas—particularly given the importance the government placed on Agent Adkins’s testimony,” according to the motion.
The motion says improper vouching also occurred during closing and rebuttal, and prosecutors also injected personal opinion, misstated the law and disparaged Ridley-Thomas’ lawyers.
It cites Fischer’s own words when she told Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Morse, “There are ways to make arguments that don’t border on impugning the character of counsel.” Fischer was addressing Durie’s objection to Morse saying in his rebuttal that her choice of testimony to display in her closing could “even be incorrect.”
“Though the Court indirectly sustained the defense’s objection, its instruction to the government to avoid impugning counsel’s character was given outside the presence of the jury. And no curative instruction was given,” the motion says.
The motion also argues prosecutors improperly impugned defense counsel’s character by arguing Ridley-Thomas “manufactured a defense.”
“Such argument is plainly improper because it was inflammatory and entirely unsupported by the record,” the motion says.
The motion includes eight passages from Dotson’s closing argument it alleges contain improper opinions.
In one, Dotson addresses testimony from defense expert Ann Ravel, who said Ridley-Thomas’ donation of campaign money to USC in conjunction with USC’s donation to United Way wasn’t illegal, by saying “that seems crazy, but let’s go with it.”
In another, Dotson says “there is no doubt” that Ridley-Thomas is intending to be influenced and “my goodness” intended to be a reward for Los Angeles County business.
“Each remark individually reveals the prosecutors’ personal opinions about Dr. Ridley-Thomas’s guilt—not their opinions about what the evidence shows,” according to the motion. “Considered collectively, there can be little doubt that these inappropriate remarks impaired the jury’s ability to separate the evidence in the case from prosecutors’ personal views of that evidence.”
Previous coverage:
Verdict: March 30: Jury convicts Mark Ridley-Thomas of bribery, conspiracy in federal corruption trial
Deliberations: March 30: Jury asks about final 15 counts of Mark Ridley-Thomas' 19-count USC bribery indictment
Deliberations: March 29: 'Does unlawful mean illegal?' Jurors in city councilman's USC bribery trial mull instructions
Rebuttal: March 26: Jury hears prosecutor's final account of Mark Ridley-Thomas' evolving USC bribery scheme
Closing arguments: March 23: Defense says USC’s 'VIP' treatment made scholarship for Mark Ridley-Thomas' son 'business as usual'
Defense witnesses: March 22: Defense rests in suspended L.A. City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas' federal corruption trial
FBI Special Agent Brian Adkins: March 20: More from the FBI agent's testimony in L.A. City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas' criminal trial
MRT and Ralph Frammolino emails, USC whistleblower Michele Clark, USC employee Adriana Gonzalez: March 18: Prosecutors rest their public corruption case against L.A. City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas
Voir dire, evidentiary hearing: (I missed the first three trial days) March 8: primer on suspended Los Angeles City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas' bribery trial
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The L.A. County Board of Supervisors voted to rename Los Angeles County - USC Medical Center..
There is an announcement scheduled later today to reveal the new name.
L.A. County Ridley-Thomas Medical Center, perhaps??