Southern District Judge William Pauley (See Profile) yesterday rejected another retrial bid by a former Deutsche Bank broker in the Jenkens & Gilchrist tax shelter fraud case. David Parse had claimed his lawyers with Brune & Richard provided ineffective assistance of counsel when they failed to disclose evidence that a juror during the 2011 trial lied about her identity. Pauley ruled last June that Parse had waived any claim to a retrial based on the misconduct of juror Catherine M. Conrad, who lied about her identity as a suspended lawyer with a criminal record (NYLJ, June 5, 2012).
Parse then moved for a new trial based on his claim that Brune & Richard’s Susan Brune, Theresa Trzaskoma and Laurie Edelstein were ineffective because they failed to disclose their in-trial suspicions about Conrad to the judge. Parse said this failure to disclose prejudiced him because it led the judge to deny him the retrial he granted to former Jenkens & Gilchrist attorneys Paul Daugerdas and Donna Guerin (who has since pleaded guilty) and ex-BDO Seidman CEO Denis Field. But Pauley said yesterday that the “strategic decision” of the Brune lawyers “to gamble on a jury that included (Conrad) and hide that knowledge from the Courtdoes not constitute ineffective assistance of counsel.”
