New Judge Assigned to Quattrone Case
A new judge has been assigned to the case of former star investment banker Frank Quattrone, but the government has yet to decide whether it plans to put him on trial for obstruction and witness tampering charges for a third time.
“The only comment we have is we will be advising the judge about the status of the proceedings,” Megan Gaffney, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, said Wednesday.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan has been assigned the case, she said.
Judge Richard Owen presided over the last two trials. On March 20, a federal appeals court threw out Quattrone’s 2004 obstruction and witness tampering conviction and granted him a new trial, citing erroneous jury instructions from Owen.
Owen had sentenced Quattrone to 18 months in prison after a Manhattan jury in May 2004 found the former Credit Suisse Group banker guilty of two counts of obstruction of justice and one count of witness tampering. Quattrone’s lawyers had argued that the trial was rife with errors.
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