Attorney Robert Simels was convicted Thursday of 12 felony counts -- including bribery of a witness, attempted witness tampering and conspiracy to commit witness tampering -- stemming from his efforts to prevent potential witnesses from testifying against his client, Guyanese drug-smuggler Shaheed "Roger" Khan.

Simels was acquitted of only the least-serious charge against him, making a false statement to a corrections officer in order to visit an inmate.

Simels' former associate, Arienne Irving, was convicted of five of 11 counts, including attempted witness tampering and conspiracy to commit witness tampering.

"The defendants' crimes were an affront to the criminal justice system," Eastern District U.S. Attorney Benton J. Campbell said in a written statement Thursday. "This case demonstrates that those who seek to use their license to practice law as license to commit crimes will be brought to justice."

When Simels was indicted last September, he ranked among the city's better-known defense attorneys, with a roster of clients that had included mobster Henry Hill (of "GoodFellas" fame), drug-trafficker Kenneth "Supreme" McGriff and former New York Jet Mark Gastineau,

Irving, a 2003 law school graduate, had worked as Simels' associate since December 2006.

Both defendants now face maximum sentences of life in prison and almost certain disbarment. Federal sentencing guidelines recommend a sentence of about 12 1/2 to 15 1/2 years for Simels, according to prosecutors. They have yet to calculate the recommended sentence for Irving under the guidelines.

In a 10-day trial before Eastern District Judge John Gleeson that began on July 27, the lawyers were charged with colluding with a cooperating witness to bribe and tamper with other witnesses.

Surreptitious tapes recorded by the cooperating witness, in which Simels talked about the need to "neutralize" and "eliminate" witnesses, served as the centerpiece of the prosecution's case.

At one point in the recordings, Simels told the cooperator that he should do whatever he needed to do to silence the key witness, short of killing the witness' mother.

"Don't kill the mother," Simels warned the witness, a member of Khan's gang, the Phantom Squad. "[Khan] doesn't want you anywhere near her ... . The government would go crazy. [They'd] put him into the, the SHU special housing unit, limit his phone calls, limit my access to him. So ... "

After more than six days of deliberations, the Brooklyn jury came back Thursday morning with note number 47, reporting that it had a verdict.

The jury addressed the charges against Simels first. Simels leaned forward onto the defense table, staring directly ahead at the jurors.

As the foreman reeled off guilty verdict after guilty verdict for Simels, his co-defendant, Irving, dropped her face into her hands, knowing that the verdicts boded poorly for her. When the foreman turned to Irving's verdict sheet, and began by pronouncing her guilty of the first and most serious count, conspiracy to commit witness tampering, Irving's hands and head slumped to the table.

After dismissing the jury, Gleeson gave Simels' attorney, Gerald Shargel, and the prosecution team, headed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven D'Alessandro, about an hour to prepare for a hearing on whether the federal bail statute required Simels to be immediately remanded to federal custody.

Gleeson ruled that the statute does not require remanding, and both defendants will now remain free on bail, with Simels restricted to home detention, pending sentencing on Nov. 20.

JUDGE BLASTS DEFENDANT

However, in a 10-minute preface to that decision, Gleeson gave Simels little cause for optimism that the judge may be sympathetic when handing down a sentence.

Gleeson, a former federal prosecutor, told the attorneys that he had learned a lot about the practice of criminal defense work from the testimony of Simels' expert witness, defense attorney Anthony Ricco -- that there is "more involved than meets the eye," for example, and that a "vigorous, aggressive, zealous defense" exposes a lawyer to a lot of "nonsense."

"But I don't believe this was a hard case," Gleeson said. "I saw nothing nuanced or susceptible to interpretation in any of the [undercover] recordings."

The judge said he didn't "have any doubt" that if the undercover witness "were what Robert Simels believed him to be, a cooperating member of Khan's gang, people could easily have been murdered, and that Simels knew that."

Simels "unleashed" the witness on the witnesses and their families, the judge observed.

But the "most disturbing" aspect of the evidence, the judge said, was the "matter of fact, routine way, in which Simels procured false testimony." After "years of living on the wrong side" of the law, Simels seemed "too comfortable" suborning perjury. For Simels, the judge said, encouraging a witness to lie was as simple as "passing a box of tissues."

The case marks a turning point in the relationship between Shargel and Gleeson. The two had a public feud in the early 1990s when the judge was an Eastern District prosecutor.

"Simels got an excellent defense, the best anyone could get in this case," Gleeson said during Thursday''s remand hearing. "The attorneys performed admirably, expertly, on both sides."

Neither defendant commented on the verdict. A tearful Irving left the courthouse with her parents, whose Buffalo house will continue to secure her bond. Simels was taken to Westchester Pretrial Services in White Plains to be fitted for the ankle bracelet he must wear until sentencing.

Leaving the courtroom, Shargel spoke quietly.

"It's an unusual case when you're representing another criminal defense lawyer," he told reporters. "In this way, it's particularly hard."

He said he intended to contest the verdict before both Gleeson and the U.S. Court of Appeals.

"There are legal issues that still exist," Shargel said.

Irving was represented by Javier Solano, a former Brooklyn assistant district attorney.

Solano said he intends to file a Rule 33 motion to vacate the judgment and to re-file his Rule 29 motion for acquittal.

The evidence, he contended, as he did throughout the trial, repeatedly showed that Irving was not present when any of Simels' crimes took place, and that she did little more for her boss than forward phone numbers and addresses to private investigators.

"It's devastating not only for her, but for any associate," Solano said. "What is someone in her position to do? Every time a boss or a partner or a supervisor tells them to do something that's totally within the realm of their employment, do they have to ask, 'What is this about?' For anyone in the legal profession this is a scary case."

In addition to D'Alessandro, the prosecution team included Assistant U.S. Attorneys Morris Fodeman and Daniel Brownell.

Shargel was assisted by his associate, Evan Lipton.

The verdicts strengthen the prosecution's case against criticisms raised by many of Simels' colleagues in the defense bar regarding the investigation -- that it would have a "chilling effect" on defense attorneys; that it disrupted an ongoing client-attorney relationship by feeding misinformation to the attorney; that, as evidenced by the lengthy deliberations, it ended too soon, before unambiguous evidence of Simels' guilt had been recorded.

However, two defense attorneys interviewed Thursday said they still had concerns about the way the case had developed.

Gerald Lefcourt, who calls himself a colleague of Simels, though not a friend, said that, because of the inherent tensions between prosecutors and the defense bar, special prosecutors should be appointed when a defense attorney is indicted.

Defense attorney Charles Ross added, "Questions about the manner in which the government conducted this investigation and the manner in which they conduct investigations in the future should not be disregarded simply because there was a conviction."

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