Michigan’s Attorney General has been disqualified from the long-delayed prosecution of a former Wayne County Circuit judge accused of allowing perjury during a drug trial.
The Michigan Court of Appeals, acting on orders from the state Supreme Court, issued a decision announced today that forces Attorney General Mike Cox to find another prosecutor to pursue felony criminal charges against retired Judge Mary Waterstone.
Waterstone was charged a year ago along with the Wayne County’s former chief drug prosecutor Karen Plants and two Inkster police officers — Sgt. Scott Rechtzigel and Officer Robert McArthur — with allowing a witness to lie during a trial in her court.
Cox had taken the case only after a search for an unbiased agency to handle the case outside of Wayne County was rejected by four different Michigan county prosecutors. Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy disqualified her office due to its close ties to the defendants.
Waterstone’s lawyers had complained that Cox’s office had a conflict of interest because lawyers from the attorney general’s civil division had once defended her against allegations related to the charges. Two lower courts had determined the attorney general had no conflict, but the Supreme Court in January ordered the Court of Appeals to reconsider its opinion.
The state’s highest court also put an indefinite delay on the preliminary examination of the evidence against the four in the city’s 36th District Court.
The case began in March 2005 with a bust in which officers seized more than 100 pounds of high-quality cocaine. It ended after two disputed trials with the imprisonment of bar owner Alexander Aceval, 42, and truck driver Ricardo Pena, 50. Aceval is serving a 10-15 year sentence. Pena, who eventually testified against Aceval, is serving 5-15.
Waterstone was charged in March 2009 with felony misconduct for allowing false testimony by the police officers and a police informant to be presented as a witness by Plants. The charge against Waterstone carries a maximum sentence of five years. Plants and the officers face charges of perjury, which is a potential life felony.
From The Detroit News:
