Showing an appalling lack of prosecutorial discretion that has become commonplace in this post-Enron era of criminalizing business, prosecutors from the office of New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer announced Thursday that they will re-prosecute beginning August 22nd the four counts in the criminal case against former Bank of America Corp. broker Theodore C. Sihpol on which a mistrial was declared last month. Here are the previous posts relating to the Sihpol case.
Mr. Spitzer’s dubious move comes despite the fact that the jury in the previous trial against Mr. Sihpol deadlocked 11-1 in favor of acquittal on the four charges and acquitted Mr. Sihpol on the other 29 counts that Mr. Spitzer asserted relating to alleged larceny, falsifying business records and related charges. The four counts involved in the re-trial relate to allegations that Mr. Sihpol falsified mutual-fund trading documents and participated a scheme to defraud investors.
Inasmuch as Mr. Sihpol’s defense attorneys will almost certainly request that much of the evidence in the first trial be excluded from the second trial on the grounds that it relates to charges on which Mr. Sihpol has been already found not guilty, Mr. Spitzer’s second prosecution of Mr. Sihpol faces even greater obstacles than the first. But then, Mr. Spitzer has always been more talented in espousing propaganda and demagoguery, so why should he be bothered with actually proving criminal conduct in court, anyway?