May 21, 1999

Portland, Maine

Saying that Catherine Petit should have filed a motion to delay sentencing either with her attorneys or dropped them and filed it pro se, U.S. District Court Chief Judge D. Brock Hornby denied the motion last week. Sentencing for Petit and three other defendants convicted in March on multiple counts of conspiracy, fraud and money laundering is expected to take place the second week of June.

Petit's motion was accompanied by a four-page letter to Judge Hornby, in which she alleges that Assistant U.S. Attorney Donald Clark was guilty of prosecutorial misconduct. Judge Hornby did not comment on the content's of the letter.

Clark, Petit wrote, intimidated witnesses, potential witnesses and their attorneys, threatened to indict her son for obstruction of justice, filed false and misleading information with the U.S. Probation Department - information which affects her sentencing - and intervened in her bankruptcy case by suggesting to an attorney of a creditor that he accept Key Bank's reported $1.7 million settlement offer.

Clark refused to comment on the allegations. In a phone call he made to a JusticeWhen reporter earlier this week, he said that the allegation did not exist because the judge had struck down the motion. If the motion was refiled through an attorney for Petit, he would respond, he said.

In the same conversation, Clark refused to directly answer the question of whether he knew that Donald Shields, one of the government's informants in the case, has been using an alias - Donald Lehman - and had an undisclosed account in a Montana bank. Shields claimed in a recent financial disclosure hearing that he had virtually no assets. His agreement with the government requires him to disclose any assets that were fraudulently obtained.

''You're assuming that he committed a crime just because he used a different name,'' Clark commented when asked about Shields' alias. ''That's not necessarily the case.''

Clark also said he was unaware of the status of a Androscoggin County investigation into the forgery and embezzlement of an elderly South Paris' woman's dividend checks by James Erskine, a crucial government witness who testified during the trial.

Erskine admitted to forging the woman's signature and pocketing the $12,000 during the federal trial. An Androscoggin County Sherriff's deputy investigating the charge said last month that he was unaware of Erskine's confession. Clark said he has not had contact with the Androscoggin County Sheriff's Department.

Prior to the trial, a private investigator working for Petit's defense team who brought the woman to the sheriff's department was threatened by the U.S. Attorney's Office to be named as an unindicted co-conspirator. The elderly woman initially went to the state Attorney General's Office, but they declined to investigate.

That office - primarily Assistant Attorney General Peter Brann - has been investigating issues surrounding the Petit case since 1995. Attorney General Andrew Ketterer has not returned inquiries about his office's decision not to investigate the allegations against Erskine.

The Attorney General's Office has recently announced the formation of a special investigative unit to combat fraud targeted against elderly residents of the state.