Not for the first time, prosecutors hinted Tuesday that there could be additional indictments or additional co-defendants coming in the bombshell federal drug misbranding case from earlier this year — but again, they declined to commit to a timeframe about when any additional action could be coming.
The case focuses on an alleged horse doping ring that prosecutors say included trainers Jason Servis and Jorge Navarro, among others. A superseding indictment released earlier this month revised charges slightly, adding a wire/mail fraud charge against one subgroup of defendants and leaving out several defendants who had been named in the original documents unsealed in March. It remains unclear whether the defendants not named in the new indictment plan to enter guilty pleas. All defendants, either through Tuesday's telephonic conference or through their attorneys, entered pleas of not guilty to the charges in the new indictment.
Read more about the superseding indictment here.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew C. Adams had emphasized in previous conferences that the government's investigation is ongoing and he does not know what new information could still come to light. Defense counsel for Jason Servis and Dr. Seth Fishman expressed frustration with the open-ended nature of Adams' summary of the case, asking U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil to set deadlines for the government to produce any further superseding indictments. Vyskocil declined to do so. Adams emphasized that his office did not anticipate any new indictments or new defendants would serve to slow down the existing case.
Adams also took a moment to highlight one distinction he said the government made in its superseding indictment about the types of substances described in the charges. Adams pointed out that it will not be up to the government to show whether or not the drugs named were effective at manipulating a race outcome.
“A drug that is promoted and intended to be a performance enhancer, but is a dud, is nevertheless a misbranded/adulterated drug for the purposes of this indictment and the intent remains the same for the creation and administration of those drugs,” said Adams.
Much of the discussion Tuesday focused on the difficulty of the enormous volume of evidence defense counsel must sort through as they prepare their various pre-trial motions. Adams said his office is making every effort to turn over as much information as possible well ahead of the timeframes normally required of prosecutors in this type of case, specifically so there will be as few large caches of data to go through as possible later on. Adams said his office is still in possession of nine electronic devices seized at the time of the defendants' arrest in March which experts are struggling to unlock and access and he does not know when or whether that information will become available to him.
There are a number of requirements in place for the government to provide evidence in its possession to the defense ahead of trial. That evidence is going through an expert whose job it is to identify any disclosure issues with the evidence, help to organize it, and provide it to the many defense attorneys involved — which avoids technical issues with the evidence, but also slows the process.
By all accounts, there are hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, transcripts, records, receipts, emails, and other evidence already disclosed in this case — terabytes of digital information. Fishman's attorney also revealed there were a number of drug test results and communications with the Hong Kong Jockey Club's drug testing lab as part of that evidence, though he did not expand further on what those results were.
Partially as a result of that volume of evidence, the timeline for the case was laid out only in part by Vyskocil Tuesday. Attorneys were asked to provide their first round of motions by Feb. 5; that first round is likely to include motions from defense attorneys to dismiss all or parts of the superseding indictment. The first round of motions is likely to be considered by the court at some point in April, with May as a possible target for a second round of attorney motions. Those dates could be revised further, depending on how much new evidence surfaces in the meantime.
Last week, a status conference for drug maker Scott Mangini set tentative deadlines for attorney motions and a trial date of May 10. Mangini's case also had a superseding indictment filed which did not substantially change the charges against him but which removed previous co-defendant Scott Robinson from his case. Robinson entered a plea in the case earlier this fall.
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