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State v. Diprete5/1/1998
se counsel and to the trial Justice in a frantic attempt to conceal not only their ongoing discovery transgressions but also their own active complicity with two of the state's key witnesses, Brusini and Zaino, in their attempt to cover-up and conceal the previous commission by those two witnesses of crimes such as perjury, state income tax evasion, and the filing of fraudulent documents with the Rhode Island Family Court. That was done so that the state's prosecutors would then be able to present Brusini and Zaino at trial as "clean" witnesses.
It was not until July 29, 1996, more than two years after the defendants' arraignment, that the iniquitous prosecutorial pretrial discovery chicanery began to unravel and surface. On that date the state's prosecutors, after having been prodded by defense counsel and the trial Justice, informed the trial Justice that they suddenly found some thirty additional boxes of materials that could be relevant to defense counsel's discovery requests but that ten of those boxes contained what the prosecutors asserted were privileged materials not subject to discovery. The trial Justice, by this time understandably skeptical of the prosecutors' assertions, ordered them to produce the ten boxes for his in camera inspection. The prosecutors quickly recanted their privilege assertion and instead offered defense counsel the opportunity to inspect and review the boxed materials, consisting of some 68,000 pages, at the offices of the Department of the Attorney General. When defense counsel looked into the ten boxes, they found there discovery information that had been earlier represented to them, as well as to the trial Justice, as either not existing or as having been already disclosed. Defense counsel thereafter on August 26, 1996, convinced that they and the defendants had been the victims of egregious prosecutorial misconduct, filed motions with the trial Justice, seeking imposition of Rule 16(i) discovery violation sanctions.
Hearings on the defendants' motions for sanctions commenced on October 21, 1996, and extended over a period of some thirty-two hearing days. Following that extended hearing, the learned and experienced trial justice on March 11, 1997, filed a comprehensive thirty-eight-page decision in which he found that various of the state's prosecutors assigned to prosecute the state's indictment had, over a two-year period of time, deliberately concealed crucial requested pretrial discovery materials that were essential to defense counsel's ability to adequately prepare for trial. He additionally found that during that two-year time period certain of the prosecutors had not been truthful in their dealings with defense counsel, as well as with the court, apparently attempting to conceal the fact that they had withheld requested Rule 16 discovery information from the defendants.
The trial Justice additionally found that various prosecutors had intentionally concealed from defense counsel and the court known evidence of past criminal conduct on the part of their four key witnesses as well as evidence of immunity and leniency deals that had been made with those witnesses in return for their cooperation and testimony.
He also found that certain of the state's prosecutors had actually assisted and participated with two of its witnesses (Brusini and Zaino) in a scheme to cover-up past criminal conduct on the part of those witnesses so as to be able to present them at trial as "clean" witnesses. The trial Justice then aptly noted that the prosecutors who had actually assisted in the crime cover-up scheme had conceivably not only violated our Rules of Professional Conduct but also engaged in conduct that could be deemed criminal as well and h
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 Rhode Island Personal Injury Attorneys
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