UPDATE: Another explosive passage indicates both that former U.S. Attorney and current Tulane Dean Jim Letten 1) may have engaged in unethical conduct subjecting him to a bar complaint, and 2) that higher DOJ officials were informed about what was going on but did not act, and further, that they covered up the outrageous conduct in the trial:
Also, this:
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A current dean at Tulane Law, former United States Attorney Jim Letten, knew for months that lawyers in his office were secretly blogging at the Times Picayune website to influence the outcome of a criminal case. Yet Letten never instructed his lawyers to inform United States District Judge Kurt Englehardt about their shenanigans, and never did so himself for months.
I covered this yesterday here. The following is a key portion of the court’s 129-page opinion as it relates to Jim Letten:
Letten knew for months that attorneys in his office who were supervising the criminal prosecution of New Orleans cops were engaged in a vicious blogging campaign — yet Letten did not act.
The behavior of the attorneys certainly subjects them to disbarment. And Letten had an ethical obligation to report professional misconduct of this nature, but he did not.
Jim Letten is the same U.S. attorney in charge of the office that prosecuted James O’Keefe.
Tulane Law School admitted a murderer as a student. Now, it has a dean who knowingly supervised some of the shadiest and most dishonest behavior by lawyers I have ever heard of. Students there — and the Tulane board of trustees — should question the wisdom of this man being in a position to teach law students.
As the judge noted in the opinion:
With a history of unprecedented events and acts, consideration of the defendant’s motion [for a new trial] has taken the Court on a legal odyssey unlike any other.
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