A prosecutor in Boston is facing a three-judge panel today to determine whether he should be disciplined for allegedly withholding exculpatory evidence in an incident that led to another federal judge releasing accused mobsters from prison, The National Law Journal reports.

In 2007, District of Massachusetts Chief Judge Mark Wolf sent a complaint letter to the Massachusetts Bar Counsel about Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Auerhahn. In the letter Wolf detailed missteps by Auerhahn in prosecuting alleged mobsters Vincent Ferrara and Pasquale Barone. A government witness recanted some statements about the defendants’ involvement in a murder, which Auerhahn did not disclose, Wolf said in the letter.

Auerhahn’s alleged misconduct conduct occurred between 1991 and 1993 but was not disclosed to the court until August 2002. A year later, then-U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan asked Wolf to hold off on referring the matter to the bar counsel’s office until the Justice Department’s internal ethics watchdog, the Office of Professional Responsibility, had completed its investigation.

In January 2005 OPR issued a 112-page report concluding that Auerhahn had acted in “reckless disregard of discovery obligations” and “exercised poor judgment,” although the ethics office found no evidence of intentional misconduct. Sullivan issued a written reprimand to Auerhahn.

In January 2008, Wolf sent a letter to then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey criticizing the Justice Department’s handling of Auerhahn. Wolf followed up with another letter to Attorney General Eric Holder in April 2009 asking for further review of the matter.

In the meantime, the bar counsel complaint was handed off the federal court case to Judge Joseph Tauro of the District of Massachusetts. Tauro selected district court judges George O’Toole Jr., William Young and Rya Zobel to sit on the three-judge review panel.

A Massachusetts prosecutor is slated to succeed a retiring magistrate judge on the state’s U.S. District Court, The Boston Globe reported.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Boal, an almost 20-year veteran of the Justice Department, is the chief of her office’s civil division. She will replace Magistrate Judge Joyce London Alexander.

“Ms. Boal emerged from a very impressive field of well-qualified candidates,” Chief Judge Mark L. Wolf said in a statement. “She was distinguished by her demonstrated dedication to the administration of justice, and by the skill and fine judgment she displayed in her many cases before the judges who selected her.”

Wolf has been critical of another prosecutor in the Boston-based U.S. Attorney’s office who Wolf said had withheld evidence that could have been helpful to a defendant in a gun case. Earlier this month, Wolf used the installation ceremony of new U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz to question the office’s priorities.

Massachusetts U.S. District Chief Judge Mark L. Wolf is deciding whether to impose sanctions against Massachusetts Assistant US Attorney Suzanne Sullivan for withholding evidence that could have helped a defendant in a gun case, The Boston Globe reported this afternoon.

Sullivan asked for leniency as Wolf weighs his options which could include fining her or making Sullivan and her whole office undergo ethics training, The Globe said.

“It is my mistake. It rests on my shoulders,” Sullivan said in court today, according to The Globe. “I also ask the court to give me the opportunity to rebuild my reputation.”

Wolf said he discovered that evidence wasn’t disclosed when he was reviewing notes Sullivan had taken during interviews for the gun case, according to The Globe.

“It’s unpardonable, and if I don’t find it deliberate, I find it’s at least ignorance and reckless disregard,” Wolf said at the hearing, according to The Globe.

Wolf wrote a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder “with a renewed hopeâ€� that the Attorney General will address similar misbehavior after former Attorney Generals Alberto Gonzales and Michael Mukasey failed to respond to similar letters, The BLT reported last month. Wolf added in the letter that U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan’s decision to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the mishandling of the Ted Stevens case “confirms that other judges share my concern.”