A Wild Ruling In The Federal Judge, Lawyer, Criminal Defendant Love Triangle Case

Judge swats down the latest arguments in the legal drama surrounding this legal trifecta of a love triangle.

The insane tale of the federal magistrate who signed off on warrant to bust a criminal defendant who just so happened to be sleeping with the judge’s husband takes another turn.

As we first reported last month, Lisa Crinel, a Louisiana businesswoman facing criminal charges for allegedly defrauding Medicare out of $30 million, is suing her former lawyer for malpractice alleging that he screwed her when they started an affair. Er… “put her at a disadvantage when they started an affair.” The point is, Crinel alleged that her business only got raided because Magistrate Judge Karen Wells Roby signed off on the warrant to get revenge because Crinel was messing around with Judge Roby’s husband. Judge Roby and the prosecutors in the case denied this and said they had no clue about the affair until after they seized Crinel’s records. Crinel also moved for an evidentiary hearing to develop her argument to suppress all the evidence gathered by the Roby warrant.

Now, Judge Susie Morgan of the Eastern District of Louisiana has put an end to this claptrap, telling Crinel tough luck.

Judge Morgan is rapidly earning a reputation for issuing “are you kidding me?” opinions. She actually had to issue a decision explaining that 1994 was, in fact, before 1995. In this matter, Crinel admitted to having little more than conjecture and innuendo to back up her claim that Judge Roby was anything but neutral and detached at the time she issued the warrant and Judge Morgan brutally slammed the door on Crinel’s motion:

Ms. Crinel’s several memoranda demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding regarding the purpose of an evidentiary hearing. An evidentiary hearing is not a “discovery proceeding” in which the defendant is given free license to fish for evidence. Rather, an evidentiary hearing is “designed for the presentation of evidence in support of factual allegations….” Ms. Crinel has failed to make factual allegations which, if proven, would entitle her to relief. Therefore, she is not entitled to an evidentiary hearing.

Once past that hurdle, the decision was pretty straightforward: Judge Roby was — as far as the government can tell — unaware that Crinel was even a target of the warrant so even if she knew that her husband represented Crinel, let alone had an ongoing affair with him, so there’s no reason to doubt the propriety of the warrant. Add in that all evidence suggests the world learned of the affair two months after the warrant and Judge Morgan concludes there’s not much reason to keep wasting her damn time.

The Government’s newly acquired knowledge cannot be retroactively imputed to Judge Roby.

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That’s some subtle shade there. Judge Morgan is a master of telling you to go to hell in a way that makes you look forward to the trip. More of a “benchtap,” if you will. That’s why she’s one of our favorites around here.

Sure she’s had a little bit of trouble picking clerks, but who doesn’t hire a child soliciting sex offender once in a while?

(Check out the full order on the next page…)

Earlier: Federal Judge Implicated In Love Triangle With Lawyer And Client
A Law Clerk With A Gilded Résumé, Charged With Solicitation And Attempted Rape Of A Young Boy
Haller Jackson, Former Federal Law Clerk, Pleads Guilty To A Sex Offense

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