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State v. Diprete5/1/1998
of an avalanche of documents. It specifically directed that the state furnish defense counsel with its specific knowledge of Brusini's criminal conduct. The state's knowledge of Brusini's criminal conduct was not flagged or otherwise clearly identified in the 600 boxes of materials. Rather the state's knowledge was in great part founded upon specific and particular documents contained therein. Defense counsel were left, however, to search for and hopefully find what they had specifically requested. What the state did here in responding to defense counsel's specific discovery requests, we condemned in State v. Verlaque, 465 A.2d 207, 214 (R.I. 1983).
Next the state denied the existence of any agreement with Brusini to forego prosecution of Brusini for perjury in exchange for his testimony. That assertion, however, was flatly contradicted by J. Richard Ratcliffe (Ratcliffe), a former chief prosecutor on the prosecution team when the deal was made. The state's prosecutors attempted to neutralize Ratcliffe's testimony by contending that the arrangement made between the state and Brusini was merely an "understanding" and not a "deal." This type of semantic obfuscation was typical of the prosecution's posture throughout the pretrial discovery proceedings. The irrefutable fact that surfaces is that the state had made a deal with a known perjurer in order to enlist his aid in convicting the defendants, and the prosecutors then ignored the trial Justice's order that specifically directed them to inform the defendants about witness inducements of this type and nature.
Finally, the state's prosecutors went as far as to represent to the trial Judge and to defense counsel that there was no chargeable case against Brusini for his perjured grand jury testimony. That argument was perhaps the least plausible and the most ludicrous. In fact the state's very own documents indicated that it knew of at least ten separate individuals, all identified by the state prosecution team as reliable witnesses, who were capable of establishing Brusini's ownership interest in the Rosemac Building. Clearly the state knew that Brusini had committed perjury, or it would never have presented that evidence to a grand jury in August of 1992 in an attempt to indict Brusini for that very crime. To reason otherwise, the prosecutors would have to admit that they had abused the grand jury process in order to force Brusini to cooperate in the prosecution of the defendants. In either case one fact becomes clear and that is that the prosecutors were overly zealous in their attempt to ensure that the defendants would not be able to adequately prepare for trial and that as a result their prosecution would be successful.
As to Frank Zaino, another unindicted coconspirator, it was discovered almost on the eve of scheduled trial that the state's prosecution team had actually assisted Zaino in falsifying tax returns and filing false documents with the Family Court in order to amend and conceal Zaino's previous false filings in an effort to present a "clean" or unimpeachable witness to the jury at the defendants' trial. The prosecution was fully aware that between 1988 and 1990, Zaino had failed to report fraudulently obtained income on his tax returns. In order to correct that blemish and present a "clean" witness to the jury at the defendants' trial, the state actually proceeded to assist Zaino in preparing amended tax returns. The amended tax return filed for tax year 1991 falsely reported income that was earned in previous years. This error was known to the state, but instead of dutifully enforcing the law, certain members of the Attorney General's office chose to assist Zaino in filing these false tax returns with the Internal Revenue
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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