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Certified Environmental Services - 1401 Erie Blvd. East, Syracuse.
(David Lassman | dlassman@syracuse.com)
SYRACUSE, N.Y. - A federal appeals court cited prosecutorial misconduct this week when it overturned criminal convictions against a Syracuse environmental lab related to asbestos removal projects.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that "impropriety permeated the proceedings" in the 2011 trial of Certified Environmental Service Inc. and three of its employees.
The court overturned the fraud and conspiracy convictions against CES and two of its employees - Nicole Copeland and Elisa Dunn - partly because prosecutor Craig Benedict repeatedly tried to improperly bolster the truthfulness of government witnesses.
The appeals court cited multiple instances of prosecutorial misconduct, including frequent attempts to vouch for the credibility of government witnesses, even after the judge told Benedict not to do so.
Benedict declined to comment this morning. Executive Assistant U.S. Attorney John Duncan also would not comment, except to say his office is reviewing the decision.
A lawyer for CES, Daniel French, said the company and its employees maintain they're innocent of the charges. The court ruled they were denied a fair trial partly because of the prosecutor's misconduct.
"One of the highest obligations prosecutors have is to try cases fairly and within the rules," said French, a former U.S. attorney. "That did not occur in this case."
The court also overturned the verdict because the presiding judge in the trial, U.S. District Judge David Hurd, improperly disallowed evidence that could have benefited the defense.
"Evidentiary errors and prosecutorial misconduct infected every stage of the trial," the appeals court wrote. It ordered new trials for three of the defendants, and ordered Hurd to resentence two others.
A federal jury convicted CES of falsifying air and lab results, enabling other companies to conduct illegal asbestos removal operations for a decade. CES, of 1401 Erie Blvd. E., was convicted on 15 counts, including conspiracy charges involving air-monitoring and laboratory fraud.
CES was accused of falsifying air and lab samples, enabling asbestos-removal companies to leave the cancer-causing material in a dozen homes and businesses in the Syracuse area.
The sites included Syracuse University, Le Moyne College, the Raymour & Flanagan furniture warehouse in Clay and the Roxboro Road Elementary School in North Syracuse.
Contact John O'Brien at jobrien@syracuse.com or 315-470-2187.