01/04/13
On Thursday, U.S. District Judge William Pauley denied the motion for a new trial by convicted Deutsche Bank employee David Parse, who claimed that he deserved a retrial as his lawyers hid their suspicions about a juror who lied about her identity, and thus he was provided ineffective counsel. However, the federal court in Manhattan found that the lawyers had hidden their suspicion about the identity of the juror based on strategy and not out of ineptitude.
Pauley observed, “This decision – to gamble on a jury that included Juror No. 1 and hide that knowledge from the court – does not constitute ineffective assistance of counsel.”
Parse, a Deutsche Bank employee, had been convicted last year, along with two former partners at now defunct law firm Jenkens & Gilchrist in connection with a $130 million tax shelter scheme. The former head of accounting firm BDO Seidman, Denis Field, had also been convicted in the same matter.
A juror in Parse's trial, Catherine Conrad, admitted after Parse's conviction that she had not disclosed that she was an attorney suspended for disciplinary reasons. Following the disclosure by the juror, Pauley ordered new trials for the other persons convicted in the matter holding that the juror's deception had tainted the verdict.
However, in case of Parse, the court ruled differently and refused to grant his request for a new trial. The federal court held that Parse's lawyers had sufficient reasons to be aware that Conrad was a suspended attorney, but they had failed to notify the court and allowed her to “infect” the trial.
Parse moved again for a retrial on the grounds that he had been provided “ineffective counsel” by his lawyers. On Thursday, the federal court in Manhattan rejected the argument concluding that the outcome would have still been the same in Parse's case, considering the “overwhelming” evidence against him.
Pauley observed in the ruling that “Parse would have been convicted even if his counsel behaved unimpeachably.”
The case is USA v. Paul Daugerdas, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 09-cr-581.
