the department has repeatedly taken
inconsistent positions in prominent
criminal and civil cases involving serious misconduct by the FBI,” Wolf
wrote in his 2008 letter to Mukasey.
“The attorney general thanked
me for providing this information and
said he would look into the matter,”
Wolf wrote. “However, I understand
that there was no alteration of the
government’s position.”
Lindsay, who died in March, issued
an order for summary judgment after
Gonzales left town, finding the FBI
liable for one of the slayings and
awarding the family $3 million in
damages. Lindsay punished the government for its conduct by heaping
on hundreds of thousands of dollars
more in legal fees. Gonzales resigned in August 2007 amid ethical,
legal and political clouds arising from
his stewardship of the department.
A WARNING CALL
WOLF’S SCRUTINY GOES BEYOND HIGH-
profile cases, though. So few in Boston likely were surprised when Wolf
announced in January that he not
only was considering punishing a
prosecutor for her conduct in the relatively low-level gun case against
Jones but also hoped “to send an important message to her colleagues.”
Jones, a convicted felon, was arrested in July 2007 in Dorchester/
Mattapan, a high-crime Boston neighborhood. Officers from the city police
and state police found a handgun in
Jones’ pocket and, later, unspecified
amounts of crack cocaine and marijuana when he was booked.
Jones was in deep trouble. Because
he was prosecuted federally, his lawyer says, the gun charge alone carried
a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence; state law imposes one year.
But Boston police officer Rance
Cooley gave conflicting accounts of
Jones’ arrest. Though he testified at
an October 2008 suppression hearing that he recognized Jones from
dozens of previous encounters,
Cooley reported to prosecutors that
other officers had identified Jones.
The lead prosecutor, Assistant
U.S. Attorney Suzanne Sullivan (no
PHOTOGRAPH: JOHN TLUMACKI/BOSTON GLOBE/LANDOV
relation to U.S. Attorney Michael
Sullivan), didn’t inform the defense
about the conflicting stories. Wolf
discovered the discrepancy when he
privately reviewed AUSA Sullivan’s
notes. Though he ruled that the deception was harmless, in effect, Wolf
was angry at Sullivan’s omission, calling it “clear and inexcusable.”
“The egregious failure of the government to disclose plainly material
exculpatory evidence in this case extends a dismal history of intentional
and inadvertent violations of the gov-
KEVIN
WEEKS AGREED TO
COOPERATE AGAINST
BULGER, HIS OLD BOSS,
AND LED POLICE TO EIGHT
BODIES AROUND BOSTON.
ernment’s duties,” Wolf wrote in a
Jan. 21 order that kept Jones in jail.
He ordered Sullivan and her boss
to file affidavits telling him why he
shouldn’t punish her or the government. Possible penalties include a
personal fine against the prosecutor,
so Wolf ordered Michael Sullivan to
disclose to him Suzanne Sullivan’s
salary. She declined comment. A
state prosecutor for 10 years before
she joined the U.S. attorney’s office
in 2006, she remains assigned to her
office’s Organized Crime Strike
Force, which she had joined just
before Jones’ arrest.
As of early June, Suzanne Sullivan
had not been disciplined. And in
Feb. 10 affidavits, both she and
Michael Sullivan contended that the
bad publicity surrounding the event
had been punishment enough.
“A finding of even negligent misconduct falls particularly hard on
someone like AUSA Sullivan, and I
know that the fact that she made a
mistake—and the scrutiny she received under examination by the
court, the public humiliation resulting
from the issuance and publication of
her name in the court’s order, the report of that order in the Boston Globe,
and its discussion among AUSAs
within the office—has been personally devastating to her,” her boss wrote.
And it won’t happen again,
Suzanne Sullivan assured Wolf.
“I am respectfully asking this
court to consider the damage to my
reputation and the consequences for
my future career if the court were to
impose anything that is characterized as a sanction. I submit that such
damage would be disproportionate
to the mistakes I made.”
Jones, despite losing his motion,
may get one of the better deals to
come out of the case. He’s reached
an agreement with prosecutors to
plead guilty to a drug charge for five
years behind bars—nearly two of
which he’s already served. In return,
prosecutors agreed not to pursue the
gun charge, erasing the prospect of a
mandatory minimum term. ■
gibeautj@staff.abanet.org
