Recently, former prosecutor Matthew Galluzzo appeared on PBS Channel 13 to explain several legal issues relating both the recent verdict in the Trump civil sex abuse trial and the new indictment of Congressman George Santos.
Matthew Galluzzo is a former sex crimes prosecutor who now represents both plaintiffs and defendants in civil sex abuse cases. He also regularly defends individuals accused of white collar crimes and fraud in federal court.
The link to the interview is available here.
This morning Matthew Galluzzo, former Manhattan prosecutor, appeared on LA FM, a radio station based in Colombia, to discuss some aspects of the prosecution of Donald Trump in Manhattan. In English and Spanish.
Donald Trump: ¿puede llegar a la presidencia de Estados Unidos? | La FM
Now that Trump has been indicted in Manhattan (New York County) for alleged crimes relating to the falsification of business records, some experts have hypothesized that the judge overseeing the case will order a pre-trial gag order over the parties – including the prosecutors, the defense attorneys, and the famous defendant himself, ex-President Trump. This post discusses the legal issues surrounding a gag order and the practical implications of it in this case.
A gag order basically instructs a party to a litigation to refrain from speaking publicly about the case. A New York judge overseeing a criminal case has the power to issue a gag order over one or more of the parties to the case. Gag orders are relatively rare, however. They certainly are not done as a matter of routine. The Constitution guarantees the right to free speech, after all, and courts are generally loath to abridge those rights. However, gag orders may be necessary to protect other valuable rights under the Constitution, such as the right to a fair trial (contained in the Sixth Amendment of the Bill of Rights), as well as the all-important “true administration of justice”.
Sometimes defense attorneys ask courts to order prosecutors not to talk about their clients’ cases publicly for fear that they would prejudice any potential jurors. For example, the attorneys for Ghislaine Maxwell – convicted in Manhattan federal court of assisting notorious sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein – contended that the federal prosecutors had tainted potential jurors by hosting press conferences in which they laid out the facts of their case. Ultimately that application for a gag order was denied, but the federal judge did admonish the attorneys to adhere to the rules of professional conduct for lawyers, which generally prohibits attempts to unfairly influence juries (or potential juries) outside of the courtroom. After all, the paramount rule of trials was explained by Justice Holmes in 1907: “The theory of our system is that the conclusions to be reached in a case will be induced only by evidence and argument in open court, and not by any outside influence, whether private talk or public print.” Patterson v. Colorado, 205 U.S. 454, 462 (1907).
Now that Donald Trump has been indicted in New York County (Manhattan) Supreme Court on felony charges relating to the alleged falsification of business records, one of the more interesting issues to consider is the possibility of selecting a jury to hear Mr. Trump’s case.
As a preliminary matter, it seems reasonably likely that a trial will in fact happen. Having indicted a former president on numerous felony counts, it seems unlikely that they will make Mr. Trump a plea bargain offer to anything less than a felony. To anyone who knows Mr. Trump at all, it seems inconceivable that he would admit to any guilt of a crime, especially with a looming presidential election. Thus, in the absence of a plea bargain (which resolves most cases), a trial should happen.
That being said, it is quite likely that the trial might not happen before the presidential election next year. One can only imagine what would happen to the indictment if Mr. Trump were elected president prior to the trial taking place.
On April 2, Matthew Galluzzo was quoted as a legal expert by Canadian national news as to whether Mr. Trump could receive a fair trial in Manhattan. The link to the article is available here.
On March 31, Matthew Galluzzo – a criminal defense attorney and former Manhattan prosecutor – appeared on NPR’s Morning Edition with host Sacha Pfeiffer to discuss the new Trump indictment in New York County. A link to his interview is available here.
Philadelphia Eagles football player Josh Sills was recently indicted by a grand jury and arrested for allegedly raping and kidnapping a woman in Ohio in December 2019. The team immediately suspended him; otherwise, Mr. Sills would have suited up for the Super Bowl in two weeks.
The case presents several interesting questions. First, the investigation was uncommonly lengthy. Law enforcement spokespeople explained that “The crime was immediately reported, and the Guernsey County Sheriff’s Office conducted a detailed investigation.” That detailed investigation evidently took over three years to complete, for some reason. This is not the typical length of a rape investigation; indeed, it is an extraordinarily long time to investigate a rape accusation. A few things might have been going on during that three year time period.
First, there might have been DNA to analyze. Not every rape investigation involves DNA evidence, and DNA does not necessarily prove that a rape occurred at all, anyway (as DNA evidence could also indicate a consensual sexual encounter). Generally speaking, though, DNA analyses do not normally take more than a few months to process – it depends entirely on the state laboratory’s backlog.
This week, American law enforcement officers arrested Aurelien Michel, a French national living in the UAE, as he passed through JFK International Airport in New York City. He has since been arraigned before a federal magistrate judge in the Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn) on federal wire fraud charges, pursuant to 18 USC Section 1343. A complaint unsealed in federal court alleges that Mr. Michel advertised and marketed a series of Mutant Ape NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and collected nearly three million dollars in sales of various cryptocurrencies from numerous buyers and investors. However, it is further alleged that Mr. Michel never delivered the NFTs to his investors, but instead transferred this money to various accounts controlled by him. The complaint alleges that he later apologized on the platform Discord for the “rug pull” (i.e. a slang term for failing to deliver after receiving funds) because the community had become too “toxic.”
It would appear from the complaint that Mr. Michel has an obvious defense that he did not intend to defraud anyone, and that he fully intended to give his customers their NFTs eventually. He may have received the funds and then encountered difficulty in acquiring the NFTs for his customers due to volatile market conditions or other issues.
It is always difficult to estimate sentencing exposure at this stage of a criminal case, but preliminary estimates might suggest the following for Mr. Michel:
Recently Manhattan federal prosecutors announced the arrests of 17 individuals for allegedly defrauding the federal government’s Small Business Administration (SBA) COVID-relief program called the Paycheck Protection Program. In a nutshell, these individuals are accused of wire fraud for purportedly applying for small business relief funds on behalf of small businesses (or sole proprietorships) that either did not exist or did not generate the revenues described in their loan applications.
For many small businesses, the SBA’s various COVID-relief programs, including the Paycheck Protection Program, were critical in helping those businesses survive the once-in-a-generation economic downturn created by the pandemic. However, the fraudulent abuses of the program have become almost legendary and have recently been the subject of many Congressional inquiries.
The Department of Justice this year launched a task force to prosecute – at the federal level – crimes involving abuse of the COVID relief programs. So, one should expect to see more such prosecutions launched against individuals in the near future.
Federal prosecutors sometimes have a powerful statute to use against drug sellers whose products cause fatal overdoses. Specifically, 21 U.S.C. Section 841 – the most common federal narcotics distribution charge – includes enhanced penalties for situations in which the defendants have sold or distributed narcotics that caused overdose deaths. A charge with no mandatory minimum under normal circumstances might carry a 20-year minimum where it can be proven that the drug that was sold caused someone to die. Some prior felons can also face potential mandatory life sentences for selling narcotics that cause fatalities. Even in a case in which the prosecution may not be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the narcotics caused a death, the prosecution may be able to secure a very stiff sentence under the federal Sentencing Guidelines, where the evidence proves by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant’s product is responsible.
First, the government has to prove that the defendant actually sold drugs to the deceased person. Law enforcement frequently uses text messages and phone records to prove transactions in these cases. Law enforcement also frequently attempts to purchase narcotics themselves (undercover) from the target/suspect. That way, in the very least, the government can prove a charge of 21 U.S.C. Section 841, if not the overdose aspect.
Many drug overdoses are polydrug situations, meaning that the deceased person ingested more than one drug recently. In those cases, it can be more complicated to ascertain the precise “but for” cause of death. Certain drugs may interact with each other in unclear ways, and other drugs may work together in aggregate towards the same toxidrome. It is critical to have the assistance of a toxicological expert and an attorney familiar with some of the issues in overdose analysis. Many if not most of the federal prosecutions in this sphere nowadays involve fentanyl, and that drug is indeed far more potent, prevalent and deadly than most others. But that doesn’t mean that fentanyl – even when it shows in the victim’s bloodwork – is always the but for cause of death.
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