Nevada AG Defends Conduct That Led To Criminal Robosigning Indictment Getting The Boot; Considers Returning To Grand Jury With Revised Charges

In Las Vegas, Nevada, The National Law Journal reports:

• A Las Vegas judge has dismissed a high-profile criminal "robo-signing" case against two Southern California title officers after their attorneys accused the Nevada attorney general's office of prosecutorial misconduct.
  
  Defense attorneys John Hueston and Kenneth Julian had argued that prosecutors—in their zealous pursuit to bring criminal charges tied to the mortgage meltdown—gave the grand jury an improper definition of what constituted a forgery and threatened a witness into pleading guilty. The witness later committed suicide.

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• [Clark County, Nevada District Judge Carolyn] Ellsworth gave the attorney general's office leave to bring revised charges against both defendants. Jennifer Lopez, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, said the office was evaluating whether to do so.
  
  "There was no intent to mislead the grand jury," she wrote in an email to The National Law Journal. "We think the judge recognized this. The judge's ruling allows this office to return to the grand jury. We are in the process of now evaluating the judge's ruling and the evidence."

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• In court documents, senior deputy attorney general Robert Giunta defended the office's definition of forgery to the grand jury. "The defendants' signatures were not provided on the [notices of default]; the notary falsified the defendants' signatures. This is the falsity or forgery as alleged in the indictment," he wrote.

For the story, see Massive 'robo-signing' prosecution dismissed for misconduct.