U.S. Drops Case Against Judge, Who Resigns

The federal government Monday dropped its 7-year-old criminal prosecution of U.S. District Judge Robert P. Aguilar--the first federal judge ever indicted in California--in exchange for Aguilar’s immediate resignation from the bench.

In January, a federal appeals court paved the way for the agreement by overturning Aguilar’s sole remaining conviction, on charges of disclosing wiretap information. The U.S. Justice Department had until Monday to decide whether to appeal to the Supreme Court.

In the signed agreement, Aguilar, 65, acknowledged disclosing wiretap information but did not admit criminal wrongdoing. With no conviction on his record, the 16-year judge for the Northern District of California will be eligible for a pension.

Since the convoluted case first went to trial in 1990, Aguilar had kept his title and continued to receive his paycheck but spent most of his time working on out-of-court settlements for other judges, said his attorney, Paul B. Meltzer.

“I think history has shown that the decision to charge him criminally was a mistake,” Meltzer said. “I think it was pursued for all the wrong reasons [and] for too long.”

The government said in a statement that retrying Aguilar, who had already been tried twice, would be difficult because two crucial witnesses for the prosecution have died.

Appointed to the bench in 1980 by President Jimmy Carter, Aguilar ruled against the federal government in several high-profile cases before his legal troubles began. In one decision, he limited the government’s right to search factories for illegal immigrants, and in another he restricted aerial surveillance of suspected marijuana fields.

The judge first came under scrutiny in 1987, when federal agents began investigating health care fraud in the San Francisco Bay Area, specifically targeting a former Teamsters official named Rudy Tham and an aging mobster named Abe “Trigger” Chapman.

As a relatively minor part of an original eight-count indictment, the government alleged that Aguilar had tipped off Chapman that he was the subject of a wiretap investigation. The more serious accusation was that Aguilar had attempted to influence fellow judges to be lenient in two other cases, one involving Tham, the other Chapman.

After his first trial ended in a hung jury, the government retried Aguilar in 1990. He was acquitted of attempting to influence the judges but convicted of the wiretap charge and of obstructing a grand jury’s investigation by lying to the FBI about the incident.

In 1994, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals tossed out both convictions. In June 1995, the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated his conviction on the wiretap charge. His attorneys then took the wiretap case back to the 9th Circuit on another issue, this time arguing that the jury had been improperly instructed. The appeals court agreed, and tossed out Aguilar’s last conviction for the last time.