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Is there so little to do in Vermont that the cops have resorted to this?
Police in Vermont unsuccesfully tried to bust a local attorney in a bizarre sting. Eileen Hongisto is an area defense attorney, and she had a criminal case where she was defending someone against domestic violence charges.
A local police detective went to court and got a warrant to execute this sting. After getting the warrant, the detective called Hongisto, pretending to be a witness in the case:
Saying he wanted to help Hongisto’s client, he asked whether he should try to avoid police efforts to serve him a subpoena to come and testify in court or whether, if served with a subpoena, he should fail to show up in court.
Court papers say police thought Hongisto might commit the crime of obstruction of justice by advising the phony witness to take these steps. The sting failed when Hongisto told the caller she wasn’t his lawyer and that if he got a subpoena he would need to go to court.
This is pretty ridiculous, especially when you look more closely at why the cops tried to catch Hongisto. Apparently, they recorded phone calls between the defendant and both his mother and girlfriend. And during these calls, the defendant suggested that Hongisto said that the charges would be dropped if witnesses didn’t show up to court. As Hongisto’s lawyer says, however, that’s simply a factual statement explaining the process to her client. “If you can’t tell your client about the state’s burden of proof, your ability to do your job is not just chilled, it’s frozen.”
What really confuses me the most about this, however, is that a judge actually signed off on the warrant. Doesn’t make much sense to me.
(Hat tip to The Legal Reader)
