A former judge imprisoned for bribery said in a court document that his attorney-client confidentiality should be waived only in part and even then only for one of his original lawyers as part of an effort to get his conviction overturned.
In a court filing Tuesday, Michael Maggio said any such waiver should apply only to attorney Lauren Hoover, not to her co-counsel, Marjorie Rogers, or the law firm where Hoover and Rogers worked when Maggio's case was in U.S. District Court in Little Rock.
Maggio, 57, asked the court in October to release him from prison because Maggio contended Hoover gave him ineffective counsel by misleading him, withholding information from him and pressuring him to plead guilty to the federal bribery charge in 2015.
A former judge for the 20th Judicial Circuit in Faulkner, Van Buren and Searcy counties, Maggio is serving a 10-year sentence at the Big Sandy U.S. Penitentiary in Kentucky.
The U.S. attorney's office quickly responded to Maggio's October request by asking that it be allowed to confer with Hoover and Rogers so that the federal government could prepare a response to Maggio's petition.
Hoover said she had no comment Tuesday. Rogers was in court and did not immediately return an email seeking comment.
In his response Tuesday, Maggio said a confidentiality waiver should apply only to any relevant communication between him and Hoover and only to the criminal matter at hand, not to any other matters in which Hoover may have represented him.
Hoover "was at all times the lead counsel and as such was responsible for all decisions during representation," Maggio wrote. She also was the "sole point of contact" regarding his defense, he said.
Maggio also said that "it is not necessary to release any files to" Hoover because, he said, "she has complete knowledge of her representation" of him and the files now belong to the North Little Rock law firm where she formerly practiced. Further, he said he "was never allowed possession of, or opportunity to review, any file [Hoover] may or may not have had in her possession." Hoover limited his ability to be fully informed, he said.
Maggio asked that he be allowed to inspect the file before its release to the U.S. attorney's office. As an alternative, he said, the presiding judge should first review it in private and under seal.
Jeff Rosenzweig, a criminal-defense attorney who is not involved in the Maggio case, said that "an allegation of ineffective counsel generally constitutes a waiver of attorney-client privilege with regard to anything relevant to the issue," but not to unrelated legal matters.
Rosenzweig commented in general and not specifically about the Maggio case.
Rosenzweig said that if an attorney accused of ineffective counsel had consulted with another attorney in the same law firm about a strategic move in a case and that lawyer got involved in the case, the two attorneys couldn't really be separated in a privilege matter.
Generally, attorneys would be "entitled to look at" a file they handled at the time if they must testify about that case, he said.
In his plea agreement, Maggio admitted lowering a Faulkner County jury's judgment in a negligence lawsuit from $5.2 million to $1 million in exchange for thousands of dollars in indirect campaign donations.
The lawsuit was filed over the 2008 death of Martha Bull, 76, of Perryville at a Greenbrier nursing home owned by Fort Smith businessman Michael Morton. On July 8, 2013, Morton signed off on thousands of dollars in donations to several political action committees. On July 10, 2013, Maggio slashed the judgment.
Morton has said he intended for the PAC donations to go in turn to Maggio's campaign for a seat on the Arkansas Court of Appeals, and some did. Maggio later withdrew from that race.
Morton and another person implicated by Maggio in the plea agreement -- former state Sen. Gilbert Baker, R-Conway -- have denied wrongdoing and have not been charged with a crime. The agreement did not identify Morton or Baker by name.
State Desk on 11/14/2018