After months without a permanent leader, the Justice Department finally appears to have found the next head of its much maligned Public Integrity Section.
The Washington Post reported Thursday that the job has been offered to Jack Smith, a career department prosecutor out of Brooklyn who left the Eastern District of New York in 2008 to work for the International Criminal Court.
Smith replaces William M. Welch II, who departed in October amid fallout from the unit’s aborted case against former Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska). The Justice Department abandoned the case after concerns arose about evidence sharing and supervisory issues by prosecutors. Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, who presided over the Stevens trial, has appointed a special prosecutor to investigate these claims.
In Smith, a Harvard Law grad, the DOJ appears to have found a tireless worker and Washington outsider who often biked to crime scenes and whose self-effacing personality and trustworthiness helped endear him to judges and juries.
“Given what the unit’s gone through in the last year, I think he’s the perfect face: an outsider, a career prosecutor, not a politician, a proven good manager and great trial attorney,” says Moe Fodeman, who worked with Smith as a prosecutor in the Eastern District of New York from 2003 until 2008. “What makes the unit unique is the high level of scrutiny on everything you do. There’s the risk that decisions will be made based on politics. It’s not like he’s a political appointee. He’ll call it the way he sees it.”
Fodeman, now of counsel at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, worked with Smith on the Ronell Wilson murder case, in which a Brooklyn federal jury returned the first death penalty verdict in New York in 54 years.
“He’s the reason why the government won,” Fodeman said. “He’s such a compelling advocate, jurors really respond to him. We got a lot of calls that went our way, legally. That’s because judges respect and trust him. He comes across as a guy who is completely trustworthy, and it’s sincere.”
[...] Mainjustice.com’s story is here. [...]