U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Rose denied motions asking for the assistant U.S. attorneys to recuse themselves and to dismiss the indictment due to “outrageous government conduct.”
Defense attorney Myron Watson alleged prosecutorial misconduct and suppressing of evidence. Watson said prosecutors only recently informed him that a confidential source committed crimes during the investigation of Spencer and that the confidential source would not be called as a witness in Spencer’s trial.
“We are very disappointed by the decision,” Watson said. “The court does not understand the full story behind the sham transactions involving (the source) and (a co-defendant) Deontay Satterwhite.”
Watson argues that a confidential source committed crimes and still got paid while working as an informant.
A U.S. Attorney’s Office spokeswoman said prosecutors would not comment on Rose’s ruling or Watson’s accusations.
In his decision denying the motions, Rose wrote that Watson cited no rules or case law in his argument. Rose said that the source recently agreed that a voice on a recorded call did not sound like Spencer’s but that Watson also had the recordings for months.
Rose wrote that the decision not to call the source as a witness is something that Watson “concocts into an allegation of fraud by the government.”
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Watson contends that the source was creating sham transactions. Watson alleged assistant U.S. attorneys Sheila Lafferty and Christy Muncy knew that a person was impersonating Spencer in phone calls and that Satterwhite wrote letters to government attorneys saying fraud was being committed by the source.
“They sat on this letter for months,” Watson said. “They knew about what was occurring and did nothing about it.”
Co-defendants Satterwhite, Guy White and William Etchison Jr. all pleaded guilty and were sentenced to time served, 24 months and 20 months, respectively.
Spencer was indicted in a separate case of providing drugs that led to the overdose death of convicted felon Dustin Rybak, who was back in county jail as a witness in a case of a child’s homicide.
The trial for charges related to Rybak’s death is scheduled for Sept. 10. Watson also represents Spencer in that case.
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