Banker in Fraud Case requests new Trail based on Rule 32

A high profile tax shelter fraud case has one of its defendents requesting a new trail based on his prior counsel being ineffective. The defendant, David K. Parse, was convicted of criminal fraud charges in 2011 while working for Deutsche Bank Alex.Brown, along with three others: Paul M. Daugerdas, Donna M. Guerin, and Denis M. Field.

This June Judge William Pauley III a federal judge for the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York granted a new trial to Paul M. Daugerdas, Donna M. Guerin, and Denis M. Field based on misconduct by a juror in the original case. He denied the new trial to Mr. Parse based on his lawyers failure to notify the court of their suspicions about the juror. From early on Mr. Parse’s lawyers were suspicious of Juror No. 1 whom they knew lived at a different location than claimed and was also part of another legal case involving a personal injury claim, but they still did not bring this to the judges attention.

In Feburary the juror admitted to lying about her legal and criminal background in order to serve on the panel. She claims that she was unbiased in her deliberations despite the omission. In May of 2011 the jury delivered a guilty verdict after 10 weeks of deliberations which required an alternate juror to take over for one who became ill during the deliberations.

Once the true information about the Juror’s background came to light it was very clear that she was incapable of being an unbiased juror. Based on this the judge ordered a retrial.

Mr. Parse has brought in new counsel to argue that under Rule 32 Post Conviction Relief that his prior counsel was ineffective when they did not alert the court to the inconsistencies in the jurors background statements. The new lawyer, Paul Shechtman, states that based on this fact Mr. Parse should be granted a new trail as well.

In Arizona Post Conviction Relief or Rule 32 is applicable if a Defendant feels that he had ineffective assistance of counsel (this usually occurs with public defender cases); newly discovered evidence has been found which supports his innocence; or there has been a substantive change in the law.