Four defense attorneys submitted letters Friday to a San Diego federal judge suggesting the government has agreed to deals on lesser charges — and in one case will grant a complete dismissal of charges — with five military officers who previously pleaded guilty to more serious offenses in connection with the U.S. Navy’s “Fat Leonard” bribery and corruption scandal.
The deals, if accurate as described in the letters, would seem to represent further crumbling of the massive, high-profile prosecution, which has been marred in recent years by prosecutorial misconduct and the escape of Leonard Glenn Francis, its key figure and the mastermind behind the worst corruption scheme in the Navy’s history.
In September, the U.S. Attorney’s Office admitted to “serious issues” with the case and prosecution errors involving evidence. In that same hearing, U.S. District Judge Janis Sammartino called the government’s conduct “outrageous.” Sammartino previously ruled a prosecutor committed “flagrant misconduct” by withholding information from defense lawyers.
Submitted Friday by attorneys for three other Navy officers who had already been sentenced, the letters — one of which was particularly scathing in its accusations against the U.S. Attorney’s Office — claim prosecutors have made a deal to dismiss all charges against former Navy Cmdr. Stephen Shedd, who previously pleaded guilty to two bribery charges. The defense attorneys wrote that Shedd, one of the key witnesses last year in the case’s only trial, perjured himself while on the stand. They also claim the perjury was committed at the behest of prosecutors who are now dismissing Shedd’s charges in order to cover up the extent of their trial misconduct.
U.S. Attorney Tara McGrath, who took over the office in October, said in a statement: “As in every case, the United States will respond in court — with civility.”
Shedd’s attorney declined to comment or confirm that a dismissal agreement had been reached.
The letters submitted Friday represented a remarkable step by their authors, all longtime defense attorneys who said they’d never before taken such drastic actions. “I have been involved in other cases in which I believed ‘cooperators’ provided false evidence or testimony, and my clients and I have never before sought to be heard with respect to the disposition of those ‘cooperators’ cases,” Todd Burns, attorney for former Navy Capt. James Dolan, wrote.
“But the Shedd situation is a bridge too far.”
The accusations in the letters also offered the latest twist in a case that for years seemed to be sailing smoothly.
Beginning in 2013, prosecutors charged more than 30 people in connection with the scandal, racking up guilty pleas and prison sentences along the way. The government alleged that between at least 2006 and 2014, Francis — nicknamed for his girth — showered gifts of fancy meals, prostitutes, high-end hotel rooms and other perks on Navy officers. In exchange, they did his bidding, providing ship schedules for the Navy’s Seventh Fleet and steering Navy ships to ports around Southeast Asia where Francis and his company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia, could then gouge the Navy on services to the tune of at least $35 million.
Francis and more than two-dozen others had pleaded guilty by early 2022, when Dolan and four other officers went on trial. That’s when cracks started to show.
The jury convicted four of the defendants — Dolan, former Cmdr. Mario Herrera and former Capts. David Newland and David Lausman — but deadlocked on charges against retired Rear Adm. Bruce Loveless. The trial was interrupted by an extraordinary three-day long hearing aimed at getting to the bottom of prosecutorial misconduct claims. Sammartino later ruled it wasn’t enough to throw out the case, but she found Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Pletcher committed “flagrant misconduct” by willfully withholding information from defendants and misrepresenting that information to the court.
A few months after the trial ended, Francis fled the luxury San Diego home where he was on house arrest, ending up in Venezuela, where he was captured. It’s believed he remains in custody there.
After the trial, attorneys for the four convicted officers spent more than a year arguing for either a new trial or complete dismissals of their cases. Prosecutors spent several months preparing written responses to those motions, which ultimately were never filed. In September, prosecutors dismissed the felony convictions against the four and resolved their cases with misdemeanor pleas instead, with no punishment other than $100 fines.
Now it appears four other officers who pleaded guilty to bribe-taking felonies before the trial will similarly be sentenced on reduced misdemeanor charges.
Retired Chief Warrant Officer Robert Gorsuch, former Capt. Donald Hornbeck, former Cmdr. Jose Sanchez and retired Marine Col. Enrico “Rick” DeGuzman were each set to be sentenced on felony bribery charges in either January or February. But on Friday, their sentencing hearings were pushed up to Dec. 20. The filings indicated that, contrary to what was previously scheduled, the sentencing hearings will go forward without pre-sentence reports by probation officers — a key signal that they now face lesser charges without potential jail time.
Attorneys for the four men did not respond to phone and email messages Friday.
In his letter to the judge Friday, Burns said there was “nothing objectionable” about those dispositions for Gorsuch, DeGuzman and Hornbeck, who did not testify at trial. “Those three men were also victims of the prosecutors’ misconduct,” he wrote.
Burns called on Sammartino to investigate Shedd’s deal, writing that referring to him as a “cooperator … doesn’t do justice to Shedd’s rampant dishonesty and trial perjury.” Burns wrote in the letter he believes the government cut a deal with Shedd over concerns Shedd would expose more prosecutor misconduct.
“The government’s decision to dismiss Shedd is morally and legally backwards,” Burns wrote.
Burns’ accusations did not seem outlandish to the attorneys of his client’s co-defendants. Later Friday, three other attorneys representing Newland and Lausman submitted letters concurring with Burns.
“Like Mr. Burns, I firmly believe that the proposed deal for Mr. Shedd is another attempt by the Government to avoid further public scrutiny of their outrageous conduct in this case,” wrote Joseph Mancano, Newland’s attorney. “Therefore, I ask the Court to reject any agreement to dismiss all charges against Mr. Shedd, an admitted ‘traitor’ to our country.”
Laura Schaefer and Robert Boyce, attorneys for Lausman, sent the third letter, writing that the government’s actions in this case will inevitably result in public mistrust of the justice system.
“The government’s decision cannot withstand scrutiny,” they wrote. “(W)e request the Court reject the government’s deal with Mr. Shedd and conduct an inquiry.”
As of now, Shedd has a sentencing hearing scheduled for March.
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