Craig S. Morford
Encyclopedia
United States Deputy Attorney General
United States Deputy Attorney General is the second-highest-ranking official in the United States Department of Justice. In the United States federal government, the Deputy Attorney General oversees the day-to-day operation of the Department of Justice, and may act as Attorney General during the...
. He is best known for his successful prosecution of James A. Traficant and The Morford Report, written after the overturning of the 2003 Detroit Sleeper Cell
Detroit Sleeper Cell
The Detroit Sleeper Cell is a group of men of Middle-Eastern descent who the United States Department of Justice believed were plotting an attack on Disneyland. The members of the alleged cell were Farouk Ali-Haimoud, Ahmed Hannan, Karim Koubriti, and Abdel Ilah Elmardoudi.-Trial:While on a trip...
convictions.
Personal life
Craig Morford grew up in Schenectady, N.Y. in a middle-class family. His father, William, marketed Pillsbury products to grocery stores in upstate New York and New EnglandNew England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
. His mother, Betty, was a homemaker who also sold women's clothing during in-home shows. His older brother, William is an antiques dealer. As a child, Morford was intrigued by "Perry Mason
Perry Mason
Perry Mason is a fictional character, a defense attorney who was the main character in works of detective fiction authored by Erle Stanley Gardner. Perry Mason was featured in more than 80 novels and short stories, most of which had a plot involving his client's murder trial...
" and "Judd for the Defense" and dreamed of becoming a lawyer.
He and his wife, Mary Jo, have four children, ages 13 to 22 and live in Rocky River, Ohio.
Education
In 1981, he graduated with an EconomicsEconomics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
degree from Hope College, a small liberal arts school in Holland, Michigan and spent his junior year in Washington. He had internships with Sen. Harrison Schmitt
Harrison Schmitt
Harrison Hagan "Jack" Schmitt is an American geologist, a retired NASA astronaut, university professor, and a former U.S. senator from New Mexico....
of New Mexico and Kimberly-Clark
Kimberly-Clark
Kimberly-Clark Corporation is an American corporation that produces mostly paper-based consumer products. Kimberly-Clark brand name products include "Kleenex" facial tissue, "Kotex" feminine hygiene products, "Cottonelle", Scott and Andrex toilet paper, Wypall utility wipes, "KimWipes"...
Corp.. In 1984, he graduated from Valparaiso University School of Law in Indiana, 20th in his class of 87.
Career
Morford has worked for the Justice Department for twenty years and has spent most of his career pursuing public-corruption and organized-crime cases in Cleveland, OhioCleveland, Ohio
Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...
.
His first job was with the Internal Revenue Service
Internal Revenue Service
The Internal Revenue Service is the revenue service of the United States federal government. The agency is a bureau of the Department of the Treasury, and is under the immediate direction of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue...
's district counsel office in Cleveland. In 1983, a senior attorney decided the IRS should pursue a tax case against James A. Traficant, elected to Congress in 1984, should have paid taxes on the $163,000 he took from the mob. 1987, Morford and Richard Bloom argued the case. Traficant, who had represented himself on a 1983 bribery charge, and won, chose to represented himself again however this time the verdict was "lost".
1987, Morford was hired by the Strike Force
Strike Force
Strike Force was an American action-adventure/police procedural television series that aired on ABC during the 1981–1982 television season. The program starred Robert Stack as Capt. Frank Murphy, the leader of a group of specialized detectives and police officers whose job is to stop violent...
to help prosecute pornography czar, Reuben Sturman
Reuben Sturman
Reuben Sturman was an American pornographer and businessman from Ohio. He was featured as a subject in Eric Schlosser's 2003 book on underground economies Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market....
, who was convicted of hiding and laundering his profits. He also teamed with James Wooley and prosecuted three Hells Angels
Hells Angels
The Hells Angels Motorcycle Club is a worldwide one-percenter motorcycle gang and organized crime syndicate whose members typically ride Harley-Davidson motorcycles. In the United States and Canada, the Hells Angels are incorporated as the Hells Angels Motorcycle Corporation. Their primary motto...
accused of killing a man they mistakenly thought was a rival gang member.
Morford won convictions against mob boss, "Lennie" Lenine Strollo and his minions; several police officers, including Mahoning County Sheriff Philip Chance; three judges; eight lawyers; and the county prosecutor. From 1996-2002, Morford won 70 convictions of corrupt politicians and mob figures in Youngstown and the Mahoning Valley.
Morford lead a task force that prosecuted Lucas County Republican Chairman Tom Noe and officials at the Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation.
He briefly worked as acting U.S. attorney in Detroit and Nashville.
In 2002, he was the lead prosecutor in a second case of then-Congressman James A. Traficant, who was convicted of bribery
Bribery
Bribery, a form of corruption, is an act implying money or gift giving that alters the behavior of the recipient. Bribery constitutes a crime and is defined by Black's Law Dictionary as the offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting of any item of value to influence the actions of an official or...
and racketeering
Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act
The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, commonly referred to as the RICO Act or simply RICO, is a United States federal law that provides for extended criminal penalties and a civil cause of action for acts performed as part of an ongoing criminal organization...
. Reportedly, he lost twelve pounds during the trial. Morford was Acting United States Deputy Attorney General
United States Deputy Attorney General
United States Deputy Attorney General is the second-highest-ranking official in the United States Department of Justice. In the United States federal government, the Deputy Attorney General oversees the day-to-day operation of the Department of Justice, and may act as Attorney General during the...
in 2007 and 2008, until the confirmation of Mark Filip
Mark Filip
Mark Filip is a former Deputy Attorney General of the United States, and in that capacity served as Acting Attorney General from January 20 to February 3, 2009...
. Senate investigation/confirmation would have been required for permanent appointment of Morford as the official Deputy Attorney General.
He was formerly the Acting United States Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee
United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee
The United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee is the federal trial court for most of Middle Tennessee. Based in Nashville, it was created in 1839 when Congress added a third district to the state...
and the Eastern District of Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
.
Since May, 2008, Morford is the Chief Compliance Officer at Cardinal Health, a health care technology developer in Dublin, Ohio. He is responsible for company compliance with internal policies and outside regulations that govern the company's products, services and operations.
U.S. v. James A. Traficant
In 2002, Traficant was indicted on federal corruption charges for taking campaign funds for personal use. He represented himself, insisting that the trial was part of a vendetta against him dating to his 1983 acquittal on federal bribery charges. On April 15, 2002, after nine weeks of testimony and nearly four days of deliberating, he was convicted of 10 felony counts, four counts of briberyBribery
Bribery, a form of corruption, is an act implying money or gift giving that alters the behavior of the recipient. Bribery constitutes a crime and is defined by Black's Law Dictionary as the offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting of any item of value to influence the actions of an official or...
, one count of accepting illegal gratuities, one count of obstruction of justice
Obstruction of justice
The crime of obstruction of justice, in United States jurisdictions, refers to the crime of interfering with the work of police, investigators, regulatory agencies, prosecutors, or other officials...
, one count of conspiracy to defraud
Conspiracy to defraud
Conspiracy to defraud is an offence under the common law of England and Wales and Northern Ireland.-England and Wales:The standard definition of a conspiracy to defraud was provided by Lord Dilhorne in Scott v Metropolitan Police Commissioner, when he said that Conspiracy to defraud therefore...
the United States, two counts of filing a false tax return
Tax return
A tax return is a tax form that can be filed with a government body to declare liability for taxation in various countries:* Tax return * Tax return * Tax return * Tax return...
and one count of racketeering including bribery, racketeering, and tax evasion
Tax evasion
Tax evasion is the general term for efforts by individuals, corporations, trusts and other entities to evade taxes by illegal means. Tax evasion usually entails taxpayers deliberately misrepresenting or concealing the true state of their affairs to the tax authorities to reduce their tax liability,...
. On July 29, 2002, he was sentenced to eight years of prison and fined him $150,000 (in addition to $96,000 a jury had ordered him to return),
On July 16, 2002, the House Committee Standards of Official Conduct convened a misconduct hearing and heard testimony from Richard Detore, who testified on Traficant's behalf (broadcast on C-SPAN).
Detore testified that the prosecutor, Craig Morford, was allegedly witness tampering
Witness tampering
Witness tampering is harming or otherwise threatening a witness, hoping to influence his or her testimony.-Witness tampering in the USA:In the United States, the crime of witness tampering in federal cases is defined by statute at , "Tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant"...
, committing prosecutorial misconduct
Prosecutorial misconduct
In jurisprudence, prosecutorial misconduct is a procedural defense; via which, a defendant may argue that they should not be held criminally liable for actions which may have broken the law, because the prosecution acted in an "inappropriate" or "unfair" manner. Such arguments may involve...
related to the alleged Youngstown, Ohio's Cafaro Company's involvement in tax fraud and mafia money-laundering. During Detore's second interview, Morford threatened that the IRS would audit him if he did not testify according to a "script", and that he would prove Detore committed bank fraud
Bank fraud
Bank fraud is the use of fraudulent means to obtain money, assets, or other property owned or held by a financial institution, or to obtain money from depositors by fraudulently representing to be a bank or financial institution. In many instances, bank fraud is a criminal offense...
, which was false. Morford continuously attempted to harass, agitate and intimidate, "yelling, screaming, and throwing papers at" Defore for being "uncooperative", and warning him he "was getting on the wrong train". Detore refused to lie for anyone for any reason, and refused to testify. Detore's home was invaded and ransacked. Morford had granted him direct and indirect immunity, but denied it, after Detore refused to testify. "It was a process by ambush...an out-of-body experience."
Even with exculpatory evidence
Evidence
Evidence in its broadest sense includes everything that is used to determine or demonstrate the truth of an assertion. Giving or procuring evidence is the process of using those things that are either presumed to be true, or were themselves proven via evidence, to demonstrate an assertion's truth...
, Morford indicted Detore with one count of conspiracy to violate the Federal Bribery
Bribery
Bribery, a form of corruption, is an act implying money or gift giving that alters the behavior of the recipient. Bribery constitutes a crime and is defined by Black's Law Dictionary as the offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting of any item of value to influence the actions of an official or...
Statute by serving as liaison between his former employer, U.S. Aerospace Group, and Traficant, but was acquitted by a jury. See C-SPAN
C-SPAN
C-SPAN , an acronym for Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network, is an American cable television network that offers coverage of federal government proceedings and other public affairs programming via its three television channels , one radio station and a group of websites that provide streaming...
videos: here
Ohio Congressman Ted Strickland
Ted Strickland
Theodore "Ted" Strickland was the 68th Governor of Ohio, serving from 2007 to 2011. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served in the United States House of Representatives, representing ....
was so disturbed by these sworn televised allegations of DOJ misconduct that he publicly called for an investigation. The DOJ 'internal affairs' ignored Strickland, never investigating either the sworn military earwitness affidavit or the attorney billing records that corroborated the dates/times of harassing witness tampering phone calls testified to on C-SPAN and in the affidavit.
The Morford Report
After a nine-month internal review of the Detroit Sleeper CellDetroit Sleeper Cell
The Detroit Sleeper Cell is a group of men of Middle-Eastern descent who the United States Department of Justice believed were plotting an attack on Disneyland. The members of the alleged cell were Farouk Ali-Haimoud, Ahmed Hannan, Karim Koubriti, and Abdel Ilah Elmardoudi.-Trial:While on a trip...
case,
the Department of Justice
United States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...
findings showed that prosecutors railroaded the defendants to prison, concealing dozens of pieces of exculpatory evidence
Exculpatory evidence
Exculpatory evidence is the evidence favorable to the defendant in a criminal trial, which clears or tends to clear the defendant of guilt. It is the opposite of inculpatory evidence, which tends to prove guilt....
that should have been given to defense attorneys during the trial. Subsequently, On September 2, 2004, US District Judge Gerald Rosen, threw out the June 2003 convictions of three Detroit-area men.
The judge ruled that the prosecution’s “understandable sense of mission and zeal to obtain a conviction” in the wake of September 11 “overcame not only its professional judgment, but its broader obligations to the justice system and the rule of law.”
The internal investigation, a 60-page memorandum , The Morford Report submitted by Craig Morford on August 31, 2004, found that the prosecution withheld from the defense numerous e-mails, photographs, witness statements and other items, and that the errors and misconduct in the case were so widespread that there was “no reasonable prospect of winning” on appeal.
“In its best light, the record would show that the prosecution committed a pattern of mistakes and oversights that deprived defendants of discoverable evidence...and created a record filled with misleading inferences that such material did not exist...Unfortunately, numerous developments since trial, including the discovery of significant materials not disclosed by the prosecution, have undermined each part of this three-legged stool.”
Richard Convertino
Richard Convertino
Richard Convertino is a former federal prosecutor in Detroit, Michigan. Convertino was the lead Assistant U.S. Attorney in the "Detroit Sleeper Cell" prosecutions of Karim Koubriti and Abdel-Ilah Elmardoudi. However, the U.S...
, the lead prosecutor, was the subject of the Report. He was removed from the case. Convertino allegedly failed to turn over photographic evidence to the defense and obtained evidence from witnesses, leading the judge and other attorneys to believe the photographs did not exist. The Report indicated that much of the key evidence and testimony in the prosecution’s case was either fabricated or deliberately misrepresented. A videotape was found at the men’s apartment. A Tunisian man in the video told investigators that the tape was shot while he was a university student on trips to Disneyland, Las Vegas
Las Vegas, Nevada
Las Vegas is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and is also the county seat of Clark County, Nevada. Las Vegas is an internationally renowned major resort city for gambling, shopping, and fine dining. The city bills itself as The Entertainment Capital of the World, and is famous...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, and other tourist locales. Prosecutors demonstrated to the jury that the tape was surveillance footage for a potential terrorist attack, but failed to reveal that FBI agents had disagreed with this supposition, and that “under the court’s established protocol, the government should have brought this information to the court’s attention.” An Air Force colonel testified that military officials agreed that a sketch was of an aircraft hangar at the base in Turkey. The Report concluded that American investigators in Germany determined the sketch was an outline of the Middle East. A CIA official had shown it to various experts who invalidated its significance. The prosecution denied to the Defense they had photos of a Jordan prison hospital. The Report claimed, “It is difficult, if not impossible, to compare the...sketch with the photos and see a correlation." The Report report criticized the testimony of the Youssef Hmimmsa, the prosecution’s star witness. Hmimmsa testifiied that the defendants asked him to join a terrorist cell that was planning to shoot down airplanes with Stinger
FIM-92 Stinger
The FIM-92 Stinger is a personal portable infrared homing surface-to-air missile , which can be adapted to fire from ground vehicles and helicopters , developed in the United States and entered into service in 1981. Used by the militaries of the U.S...
missiles and were involved in other terrorist activities.In exchange for his testimony, Hmimmsa enter guilty pleas to 10 felony
Felony
A felony is a serious crime in the common law countries. The term originates from English common law where felonies were originally crimes which involved the confiscation of a convicted person's land and goods; other crimes were called misdemeanors...
counts, and was sentenced to 37 to 46 months in prison rather than up to 81 years. The Report claims Richard Convertino “made a deliberate decision not to have the FBI take any notes” during Hmimmsa’s debriefings sessions, to avoid any challenge to his trial testimony.
Convertino acquittal
Subsequently, in the case entitled, US v. John Doe, Convertino was charged with conspiracyConspiracy (crime)
In the criminal law, a conspiracy is an agreement between two or more persons to break the law at some time in the future, and, in some cases, with at least one overt act in furtherance of that agreement...
to conceal possibly exculpatory evidence from the defense and lying to a Federal judge. Harry Smith III, formerly a U.S. Department of State investigator, who had testified in the terrorism case prosecuted by Richard Convertino, was allegedly part of the conspiracy. Not turning the evidence over to the defense had led, at the government's request, to the court dismissal of the terrorism case prior to the charging of the case's prosecutor for the conspiracy. Convertino faced a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine. On October 31, 2007, a jury acquitted the prosecutor and the investigator. Convertino told reporters in the federal district courthouse here that the charges of obstruction of justice were “a politically motivated prosecution that never should have been brought.”
Convertino had previously filed a lawsuit
against the Justice Department, former Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and other superiors, accusing them of mismanaging anti-terrorism efforts and retaliating against him for testifying to Congress about those efforts.
Convertino explained his travails on the Public Radio International
Public Radio International
Public Radio International is a Minneapolis-based American public radio organization, with locations in Boston, New York, London and Beijing. PRI's tagline is "Hear a different voice." PRI is a major public media content creator and also distributes programs from many sources...
program This American Life
This American Life
This American Life is a weekly hour-long radio program produced by WBEZ and hosted by Ira Glass. It is distributed by Public Radio International on PRI affiliate stations and is also available as a free weekly podcast. Primarily a journalistic non-fiction program, it has also featured essays,...
.
External links
- US v. James Trafficant, May 4, 2001.
- CSPAN video of Trafficant Congressional Hearing, Part 1 July 16, 2002.
- CSPAN video of Trafficant Congressional Hearing, Part 2 July 16, 2002.
- CSPAN video of Trafficant Congressional Hearing, Part 3 July 16, 2002.
- US v. KARIM KOUBRITI, et al., August 28, 2002.
- Richard Convertino v. USA, February 13, 2004.
- "The Prosecutor", May 30, 2008