Results matching “bergrin”

As the kidnappers pulled into a quiet, upscale golf course community, they thought they were about to abduct an assistant district attorney who sent a high-ranking gang member to prison for life, authorities said.

But they had the wrong address and when the prosecutor's father answered the door, they took him instead.

For five days, authorities said the kidnappers held 63-year-old Frank Janssen captive in an Atlanta apartment, tormenting his family by sending text messages threatening to cut him into pieces if police were called or their demands weren't met. They even sent a photo of him tied up in a chair.

In his trial, which began in January, prosecutors were permitted to play recorded conversations between Mr. Bergrin and a former gang member who had worn a wire for months to record conversations as Mr. Bergrin tried to hire him to kill a witness.

"We've got to make it look like a robbery," Mr. Bergrin was heard saying on grainy tapes. "It cannot under any circumstances look like a hit."

Mr. Bergrin argued that prosecutors were corrupt and that the witnesses against him were seeking -- and had received -- shorter sentences for their crimes. He explained the recordings by saying he had known all along that the "hit man" was an impostor and had gone along in the hopes of extracting legal fees from him.

In his three-and-a-half-hour closing statement last week, Mr. Bergrin pleaded with the jury for forgiveness, insisting that he was ashamed of the things he had been heard saying but that he was merely defending his clients.

"I get caught up in them, their families, their anguish," he said. "You try to work tirelessly and endlessly, as if they're your own children, as if they're your own family. I tried to be there for the downtrodden, for the underdog, for the destitute, to show the client and the people that they have somebody who is willing to stand up for them."

[The first judge on the case, later removed by the Third Circuit] refused to allow the authorities to try him on any of the charges other than two murder counts, for allegedly ordering members of a Newark gang to kill Kemo DeShawn McCray, a confidential F.B.I. informant who was to serve as a crucial witness in a case against one of Mr. Bergrin's clients.

Q:  What's even better than a suppression motion?

A:  Offing the government's star witness.  That way, you don't have to worry about an appeal.

The feds have indicted a prominent New Jersey defense lawyer, Paul Bergrin, for murdering a government witness in a case he was defending, a fellow named Kemo McCray.  I have no personal knowledge of the case, and the judgment about Bergrin's guilt vel non will, obviously, have to await a jury's consideration.  But New York magazine has a fascinating article about it.  For example, these two paragraphs:

" 'No witness, no case'--that was Paul's motto," said one attorney [who knew him]. "There was this guy with a tattoo of the scales of justice on his back. Below the scales was the quote, 'No witness, no case--Paul Bergrin.' When your customers are all criminals, what's better advertising than a prison tattoo?"

Everyone had his Paul Bergrin ­story--how he started off with one client, then switched to another defendant in the same case, got the second guy to flip against the first, and kept the money from both. There were tales of how Bergrin planned to open a $30 million gambling casino in the Costa Rican cloud forest. And of course, there was the whorehouse deal. Bergrin had taken control of one of Manhattan's ritziest escort services and started bringing a steady stream of cops, lawyers, and even a prison official to the brothel's Worth Street headquarters, where the samples were free.

The trial wll be fascinatng to follow, if the government can persuade anyone to testify.