GOV CRIST IMPEACH JENNE PLEASE

GOV LETS DO IT SIR

gov crist creamer or soule for sheriff please impeach ken jenne.

great choices

We need Creamer in our bso.

Broward sheriff's legal expenses questioned

Posted on Tue, Aug. 28, 2007l

BY WANDA J. DeMARZO AND JAY WEAVER
wdemarzo@MiamiHerald.com
The Broward Sheriff's Office has paid more than $272,000 in legal fees to a former U.S. attorney in Miami who has represented the agency during a federal criminal investigation into Sheriff Ken Jenne's personal finances, according to public records.

Since March 2006, the agency also paid out more than $105,000 to four other lawyers who represented 11 BSO deputies and others questioned during the grand jury probe, records show.

BSO hired former federal prosecutor Guy Lewis and his firm -- which charged up to $650 an hour -- to coordinate subpoenas for BSO documents and employees.

The county agency has no criminal liability in the case, and Lewis said he was not hired to defend Jenne, who pays his own private criminal attorney.

But Lewis' legal bills show his firm charged BSO for numerous consultations with Jenne -- including preparation for a Feb. 21 ''settlement conference'' with federal prosecutors, ''multiple'' telephone calls and meetings with Jenne, and conferences with witnesses before and after they testified before the grand jury in Fort Lauderdale.

Jenne and another BSO official signed the checks paid to Lewis' firm as well as the other retained attorneys.

The bills raise questions about whether Lewis may have provided legal counsel to Jenne at taxpayer expense when his only responsibility was to BSO, according to legal and other observers.

Lewis, however, said he merely handled records and subpoenas involving BSO and its employees. There was no conflict, he said, because Jenne ordered BSO to fully cooperate with investigators.

''There was a natural overlap, not a calculated one, not a problematic one,'' Lewis said. ``My instructions from Jenne were to cooperate fully. With that mandate, I didn't see any potential for conflict.''

David Bogenschutz, Jenne's private attorney, said as head of the agency, the sheriff knew how and where all the documents could be found in the vast BSO bureaucracy.

And no one is more familiar with the inner workings of the agency, he added.

''It's difficult to know where Ken Jenne stops and BSO begins,'' Bogenschutz said. ``BSO is Ken Jenne.''

Jenne, 60, who has served as Broward's top cop since 1998, faces possible fraud charges for allegedly using his office for personal gain by accepting more than $100,000 in unreported payments from BSO contractors and others.

Details of the legal bills were disclosed by BSO over the past week as part of a public records request from media outlets, including The Miami Herald. The records point to the extent of the federal investigation, which began in April 2005 with a Florida Department of Law Enforcement probe. It could end soon with a plea deal or indictment, according to sources familiar with the case.

BSO's general counsel, Ed Dion, also worked on subpoena requests with Lewis' firm.

Dion told The Miami Herald that BSO has no contract or letter of engagement with Lewis' firm, though Lewis has worked for BSO before on an unrelated crime-statistics audit.

Lewis' responsibility was to coordinate what he calls a ''highly complex case'' -- including 20 grand jury subpoenas for about 20,000 documents and 12 more subpoenas for agency witnesses.

In February alone, Lewis and his firm billed the sheriff's office $34,656 in attorney's fees. Among the charges: preparation for the Feb. 21 ''settlement conference'' to try to resolve the criminal investigation at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Miami, where Lewis, his partner Michael Tein and Bogenschutz met with South Florida's top federal prosecutor, R. Alexander Acosta.

A week before that meeting, Lewis' monthly invoice indicated he had ''multiple telephone conferences with Sheriff Jenne'' and made ``multiple attempts to reach Mr. Bogenschutz's office.''

Lewis admitted sometimes there was overlapping in his responsibilities for BSO and the sheriff -- especially when federal prosecutors Pat Sullivan and Matt Axelrod sought Jenne's personal financial records.

But when it came to his personal records, Jenne drew the line, Lewis said. Bogenschutz ended up handling prosecutors' demands for those documents, including bank statements, as well as records from his business and consulting activities, Lewis said.

A law professor who specializes in ethics said the larger question -- whether BSO or Jenne is the client -- appears to muddle Lewis' role as legal advisor to the public agency.

''The conflict of interest question is a fair one, in light of the fact that the interests of BSO may very likely diverge in an adverse way from the interests of Ken Jenne,'' said University of Miami law professor Tony Alfieri, who heads the UM Center for Ethics & Public Service.

He criticized the lack of a formal agreement between BSO and Lewis' firm that would spell out the scope of its legal responsibilities to avoid conflicts. But he noted that was not uncommon among government agencies.

Kenneth Harms, a former city of Miami police chief, said Lewis' bills suggest that Jenne acquired Lewis, a prominent lawyer with political influence, to help with his defense.

''I cannot fathom the frequency that Lewis and his office were consulting and conferring with Jenne,'' said Harms, who reviewed the bills at The Miami Herald's request. ``He is getting free legal service at the county's expense to try to improve his position in terms of the final outcome of the investigation.''

Lewis denied representing Jenne in his legal work for BSO, asserting the agency was his client. He acknowledged that he met and spoke with the sheriff more than any other agency employee but said Jenne's sole purpose was to facilitate the turnover of BSO records and testimony of witnesses.

'There's no doubt there's an overlap of responsibility, but not to the point where I told the sheriff, `Take this plea, don't take this plea.' That wasn't my role,'' Lewis said.

When asked about his role in the February settlement conference, Lewis said: ``I was struggling and looking for ways to resolve this thing sooner rather than later. Ever since then, it's been pure David [Bogenschutz] in the negotiations with the U.S. Attorney's Office.''