Panel Targets ‘Mob-Connected’ Lawyers

Charging that lawyers are reluctant to report unethical conduct by other attorneys, the President’s Commission on Organized Crime today will call for tighter self-policing requirements and for greater electronic surveillance to root out lawyers involved in criminal activity.

The commission’s final report, a copy of which has been obtained by The Times, includes five case studies of what the document calls “lawyer-criminals” who the commission alleges actively participated in organized crime.

One example cites Michael Corio, described by the report as a “mob-connected” lawyer with close links to the Gambino family of the Mafia. Corio, who the commission said is under indictment in a heroin-trafficking case, has what the report claims is “a very special relationship” with the Gambino family, illustrated by a wiretapped conversation he held with a “soldier” in the family:

Soldier: “ . . . I told you that you’re our lawyer--you’re not our lawyer, you’re one of us as far as we’re concerned.”

Corio: “I know it . . . and I feel that way.”

The other lawyers whose activities were cited by the commission were Martin Light, a former assistant district attorney in New York, who later represented primarily Mafia families and who is serving a 15-year prison sentence for heroin possession; Robert Slatko, a former lawyer who was drawn into mob involvement through his drug habit and who committed suicide after his five-year sentence was upheld on appeal; Frank A. Lopez, a New York attorney alleged to have taken part in an organized-crime conspiracy to thwart a grand jury’s investigation of the “French Connection” theft of narcotics from the New York Police Department, and Kevin Rankin, who is serving a prison term for his role in an organized-crime narcotics conspiracy.

Exempts Ethical Lawyers

The commission said its section on “mob-connected” lawyers “is not meant to attack the criminal defense bar. Indeed, we distinguish the targets of this chapter by referring to them as ‘mob-connected’ lawyers, and we exempt from this characterization those lawyers who do no more than ethical legal services for organized crime figures,” the report said.

The panel noted that uncovering lawyers who induce perjury, obstruct justice and aid and abet criminal acts “is possible only through use of wiretaps or surveillance, or if colleagues, friends or others inform on the lawyer.”

But “all evidence shows that members of the bar are reluctant to report instances of unethical conduct,” the commission said.

At a commission symposium on lawyer ethics last year, “prosecutors and defense attorneys alike spoke of their reluctance to report even flagrant instances of unambiguously unethical conduct,” the report charged.

Fear of Being Vindictive

“Prosecutors expressed a fear of appearing to be proceeding vindictively against attorneys whom they could not defeat in the courtroom,” the commission noted.

As for defense attorneys, the report said: “Their professional effectiveness and their very livelihood depends on their being perceived as advocates of defendants rather than as handmaidens of the government.”

David Margolis, chief of the Justice Department’s organized crime and racketeering section, said of the defense bar’s reluctance to report its own infractions: “They won’t represent finks, (and) they are not going to be finks themselves.”

To overcome such hurdles in taking action against mob-connected lawyers, the commission recommended that:

--Rules of professional conduct be changed to require a lawyer to report misconduct whenever he has reason to believe--and not the more rigorous standard of having actual knowledge--that another attorney is engaging in conduct that raises a substantial question about the lawyer’s honesty, trustworthiness or fitness as a lawyer.

--Attorneys suspected of criminal activity be subjected to aggressive investigations including, when necessary, the use of wiretaps and informants.

--Internal review procedures be set up under which federal and state prosecutors can refer reports of misconduct.

--Grand juries be required to refer instances of attorney misconduct to lawyer disciplinary bodies for evaluation.

--Lawyer disciplinary bodies take on a greater investigatory role in attorney misconduct matters.

--Federal and state authorities improve their sharing of information on unethical attorneys to ensure that lawyers who commit unethical acts in one jurisdiction are also disciplined elsewhere.