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The Prosecutor Goes to Dublin .jpg) Fresh
from securing a conviction of Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief
of staff Scooter Libby, Chicago federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald
appeared in Dublin the day before St. Patrick’s Day to talk about
international prosecution of crime.
“We used to think of prosecutions of conduct happening outside the
United States as coming once in a blue moon, but I think we’re going
to start seeing this a lot more frequently,” Fitzgerald told a gathering
of 100 mostly American lawyers at a seminar at University College Dublin.
American prosecutors increasingly have to be aware of other countries’
laws, Fitzgerald said. Fitzgerald’s of½ce played a back-up
role in the Irish government’s prosecution of Real IRA leader Michael
McKevitt, who was brought down by Chicago mole David Rupert.
New technology means that the duty to keep abreast of other countries’
laws is more important than ever, Fitzgerald said. A prosecutor trying
to go after a child molester who puts footage of his actions on the Internet
needs to be familiar with the laws of the country in which the transmission
originates, he said.
When Fitzgerald went to Kenya in 1998 to investigate the bombing of the
U.S. Embassy there, he and his team decided to follow both American and
Kenyan law until they decided which country they would ½le charges
in.
“If there were two ways of doing it, we would do it the harder way
so it would stand up in court in either place,” he said.
That meant that instead of letting a witness sit behind a one-way mirror
and point out a suspect from a lineup of six people, as U.S. law requires,
witnesses had to come face-to-face with a lineup of nine people, then
walk up and place their hand on the shoulder of the suspect they identi½ed,
as required under Kenyan law.
Kenya does not guarantee suspects the right to an attorney, and the
New York judge who tried the case was not satis½ed Fitzgerald’s
team had satis½ed their obligation under American law to inform
the suspect of his right to an attorney and so dismissed some parts of
the man’s confession.
But both suspects were convicted anyway.
Fitzgerald has something of a dragon-slayer reputation, from being the
one who drafted the indictment of Osama bin Ladin 10 years ago, to convicting
former Illinois Gov. George Ryan and Mayor Richard M. Daley’s patronage
chief Robert Sorich of corruption.
Fitzgerald stopped short of indicting President Bush’s deputy chief
of staff Karl Rove, credited with being the mastermind of Bush’s
two campaigns for the White House, in the Libby prosecution. Libby was
convicted of lying about disclosing the CIA credentials of a wife of a
man who criticized the war in Iraq.
More than 100 American and Irish lawyers and judges including former
Irish Supreme Court Justice Hugh O’Flaherty and high court judge
Vivian Lavin attended and spoke at the series of meetings at UCD and the
Kings Inn over the weekend organized by the Chicago Bar Association, including
many attorneys who practice in both countries. Many of the questions dealt
with the division of labor between solicitors who prepare cases and barristers
who argue them in court. The division does not happen in the United States.
Chicago Bar Association President Kevin Durkin has traveled the world
representing families of people who have been killed in airplane crashes
as part of his job at the Clifford Law Of½ces.
“It’s essential that I understand the laws of different countries
in representing my clients,” Durkin said.
To maintain their licenses to practice law in the state of Illinois, Fitzgerald
and the judges must take 10 hours of “continuing legal education”
every year. The seminar ful½lled six of those hours and allowed
the attorneys to be in Dublin for St. Patrick’s Day, in many cases
meeting up with cousins, as Fitzgerald did.
Fitzgerald was one of the 63 percent of American lawyers who took no international
law class in law school.
“I thought that was for students who studied Spanish or French.
When you’re from Brooklyn, you’re working on English as your
½rst language,” he quipped.
After the seminar, Fitzgerald flew back to Chicago to watch as his deputies
gave opening statements in the criminal trial of Lord Conrad Black, former
owner of the Daily Telegraph in London, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Jerusalem
Post and the National Post in Toronto.
Two days after Fitzgerald returned to Chicago from Dublin, news reports
surfaced that one of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ deputies
had ranked Fitzgerald among prosecutors who had “not distinguished
themselves.” Fitzgerald refused to comment on the report, but one
of his top deputies, Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Collins, said upon
his retirement from the of½ce a few days later that he was “disappointed”
in Gonzales for not denouncing the dubious rating.
– Abdon M. Pallasch
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