Richard Convertino is a former federal prosecutor in Detroit, 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"....

. Convertino was the lead Assistant U.S. Attorney in the "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...

" prosecutions of Karim Koubriti and Abdel-Ilah Elmardoudi. However, the U.S. Department of Justice subsequently removed Convertino from his position and asked courts to dismiss those convictions, on the grounds that Convertino had failed to disclose evidence to which the defense was entitled.

Overview

Federal charges were laid in the Detroit Sleeper Cell in September 2001, very shortly following the attacks of September 11, 2001. DOJ's prosecution in U.S. v. Koubriti alleged that an apparent holiday video five men made while visiting Disneyland was really a clandestine reconnaissance

Reconnaissance

Reconnaissance is the military term for exploring beyond the area occupied by friendly forces to gain information about enemy forces or features of the environment....

 video, which would allow bomb experts to plan where to plant bombs. As lead prosecutor in the Koubriti case, Convertino argued that the five men were not the Westernized, secular Muslims they seemed. The government argued that they were "Takfiris" -- radical jihadists who had a dispensation to drink alcohol, use narcotics and avoid praying, in order to blend in to western societies, while secretly plotting clandestine attacks.
Doubt was cast on the prosecution's case in U.S. v. Koubriti when it was alleged that the star witness, a member of the group who turned on the others, was a known con-artist. Convertino had not disclosed this and other potentially 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....

 to the defense.

On March 29, 2006, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced criminal indictments for obstruction of justice against Convertino and Harry Raymond Smith, former security official assigned to the US Embassy in Amman, Jordan, who served as a government witness in U.S. v. Koubriti case.

Convertino has alleged that the DOJ disclosed other information to the news media that is protected by the Privacy Act

Privacy Act of 1974

The Privacy Act of 1974, 5 U.S.C. § 552a, Public Law No. 93-579, establishes a Code of Fair Information Practice that governs the collection, maintenance, use, and dissemination of personally identifiable information about individuals that is maintained in systems of records by federal agencies...

 in order to smear or discredit Convertino for his whistleblowing disclosures to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee.

Prosecuted & Acquitted

Richard Convertino was charged with conspiracy 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. The jury acquitted the prosecutor and the investigator on October 31, 2007.

In the Media

On May 30, 2008, Radio Show This American Life broadcast the Convertino's story, in relation to the conviction and subsequent retraction of U.S. vs. Koubriti. The show is entitled The Prosecutor.