John Glancy, the chair of the Professional Ethics Committee for the State Bar of Texas, says his group has not received any requests for an ethical opinion from the defense attorneys acting as stand-by counsel for the admitted Fort Hood gunman Maj. Nidal Hasan, whose trial, which is expected to test military justice system, continues. Why might Glancy have expected such a request? On Aug. 8, the military trial judge presiding in Hasan's case told those defense lawyers to get a written document from the state bar establishing that continuing to work with Hasan would be an ethical violation if they wanted her to consider allowing them to withdraw, according to CNN.com. The judge made that comment in response to one of the defense lawyers telling the judge that their continuing would cause "us to violate our professional ethics," CNN.com reports. The defense lawyer, according to CNN.com, said his team believes Hasan, with his conduct is seeking the death penalty. Of the three defense lawyers, only one, Major Joseph "Joe" Marcee, is listed as a member of the Texas bar. But Glancy says even if Hasan's stand-by lawyers do seek such an opinion, they are unlikely to get one from his committee because: "We don't issue opinions as a practice in pending litigation matters." Glancy says he would not comment further about the potential ethical violation questions raised in the Fort Hood case because, "We act only by committee."
Big Award
While the Eastern District of Texas is not known for the kind of violent crime and public corruption cases that make assistant U.S. Attorneys famous, it is known for something else: suburbs. So it's fitting that on August 15, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder bestowed the prestigious Director's Award on two current and one former AUSA in the district's Plano Division for the way they handled the most suburban of crimes — mortgage fraud. Holder, along with Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys Director H. Marshall Jarrett, picked AUSA Shamoil Shipchandler, AUSA Christopher A. Eason, and former AUSA Richard J. Johnson to receive the award. The cases they prosecuted involved over 114 properties from suburbs such as Allen and McKinney in which 40 defendants were accused of conspiring to defraud lending institutions by convincing them to approve mortgage loans for homes with fraudulently inflated values. Of those defendants, 37 plead guilty, two were convicted at trial, and restitution orders totaling more than $100 million were entered in their cases. "You and your team are responsible for the successful prosecution of the largest mortgage fraud scheme in the Eastern District of Texas to date, and one of the largest in Texas history," Holder wrote in individual letters to the attorneys. Shipchandler, who was the lead prosecutor in the cases, says he was in the right place at the right time to handle a "cool case." "Great cases don't come along every day. And by luck and circumstance, I was there when we had an FBI agent present such an interesting scheme," he says. Shipchandler notes that Eastern District was hit particularly hard by the scheme. "We were sort of at ground zero of the mortgage fraud crisis," he says. Unfortunately, Shipchandler and his fellow award recipients weren't able to receive the award in Washington DC from the AG himself as is tradition, he says. Because of Congress' sequestration budget cuts, the ceremony was held at home and Eastern District U.S. Attorney Malcolm Bales presided instead of Holder. "There is something nice about getting it amongst the people you work with every day," Shipchandler says. "There's something special about that."
