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.