Hours earlier on Tuesday, federal prosecutors had issued an advisory that Mr. Boyland was ready to plead guilty at noon, signaling that a case that has twisted and turned for nearly two years was nearing an end.
But when the time came, there were whispers in Federal District Court in Brooklyn that Mr. Boyland, there in a gray suit, had had a change of heart.
Indeed, there would be no guilty plea: At the last moment, Mr. Boyland had decided to go to trial.
A spokesman for Loretta E. Lynch, the United States attorney in the Eastern District, declined to comment on Mr. Boyland’s decision. Mr. Boyland’s lawyer, Peter E. Quijano, said in an interview that no agreement to plead guilty was in place.
Still, Mr. Boyland’s reversal was startling because he faces evidence that most defendants would hesitate to address at trial. The move also underlined Mr. Boyland’s attitude toward the court.
Mr. Boyland, 42, a Brooklyn Democrat who comes from a prominent political family, was arrested in Brooklyn in November 2011 on federal bribery charges, nearly nine months after he was arrested on similar but separate bribery charges in Manhattan.
In the Brooklyn case, he was accused of continuing to commit bribery, soliciting more than $ 250,000 in bribes from undercover federal agents, even as the Manhattan case was pending and partly in an effort to cover his legal fees in the Manhattan case.
He was acquitted of the charges in the Manhattan case in 2011, but the Brooklyn case, built on secretly recorded audiotapes of Mr. Boyland discussing the bribes, wound on.
In March of this year, Mr. Boyland’s former chief of staff, Ry-Ann Hermon, pleaded guilty to related bribery charges; she is now cooperating with the government. And on two occasions since then, Brooklyn prosecutors tacked new fraud charges onto the original indictment. They accused Mr. Boyland of submitting fake travel vouchers to the State Assembly and pilfering from a nonprofit agency.
Mr. Boyland cycled through lawyers and spent months representing himself as he tried to convince the judge, Sandra Townes, that he was poor and deserved free legal representation, even as he received a salary from the Assembly (and the travel reimbursements). When he won free representation, he marched on toward trial. The hint of a plea on Tuesday was the only blip in his defiance.
Judge Townes scheduled the trial for Dec. 2.
Yahoo Local News – New York Times
http://newyork.greatlocalnews.info/?p=14468
via Great Local News: New York http://newyork.greatlocalnews.info
No comments:
Post a Comment